6. This, however, led to a tremendous process of transformation in Judaism

with a wide chasm between Mosaism and Rabbinism, or, more accurately,

between the Sadducees, who adhered to the letter of the law, and the

Pharisees, who embodied the progressive spirit of the people. On the one

hand, Jesus ben Sira, who at the close of his book speaks with great

admiration of the high-priest Simon the Just as his contemporary, knew as

yet nothing of a future life, and like Koheleth saw the end of all human

existence in the dismal realm of the nether world. Yet at the same time,

the Hasidim or pious ones and their successors, the Pharisees, were

developing after the Persian pattern the thought of a divine judgment day

after death, when the just were to awaken to eternal life, and the

evil-doers to shame and everlasting contempt.(902) This advanced moral

view, frequently overlooked, transformed the ancient Semitic Sheol from

the realm of shades to a place of punishment for sinners, and thus

invested it with an ethical purpose.(903) After this the various Biblical

names for the nether world became the various divisions of hell.(904)

Indeed, the Psalmists and the Proverbs had announced to the wicked their

destruction in Sheol, and on the other hand held out for the godly the

hope of deliverance from Sheol and a beatific sight of God in the land of

the living. Thus the transition was prepared for the new world-conception.

All the promises and threats of the law and the prophets, when they did

not receive fulfillment in this world, appeared now to point forward to

the world to come. Moreover, the Pharisees in their disputes with the

Sadducees made use of every reference, however slight, to the future

life,—even of such passages as those which speak of the Patriarchs as

receiving the promise of possessing the Holy Land, as if they were still

alive,—as proofs of the continued life of the dead, or of their

resurrection.(905) Thus it came about that the leading authorities of

rabbinic Judaism were in the position to declare in the Mishnah: “He who

says that the belief in the resurrection of the dead is not founded on the

Torah (and therefore does not accept it) shall have no share in the world

to come.”(906)

7. The founders of the liturgy of the Synagogue, in opposition to the

Sadducees, formulated therefore the belief in resurrection in the second

of the “Eighteen (or Seven) Benedictions” of the daily prayer in the

following words: “Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou revivest the

dead. Thou art mighty to save. Thou sustainest the living with

loving-kindness, revivest the dead with great mercy, supportest the

falling, healest the sick, loosest the bound, and keepest Thy faith to

them that sleep in the dust. (This refers to the Patriarchs, to whom God

has promised the land of the future.) Who is like unto Thee, O Lord of

mighty acts, and who resembleth Thee, O King, who killest and bringest to

life, and causest salvation to spring forth? Yea, faithful art Thou to

revive the dead. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead.” In this

prayer dating from the age of the Maccabees(907) the Jewish consciousness

of two thousand years found a twofold hope,—the national and the

universally human. The national hope, which combined the belief in the

restoration of the kingdom of David and of the sacrificial cult with the

resurrection of the dead in the Holy Land, can be understood only in

connection with a historic view of Israel’s place in the world, and is

treated in the third part of this book. The purely human hope for the

continuity or the renewal of life rests on two fundamental problems which

must be examined more closely in the next two chapters. The one belongs to

the province of psychology and considers the question: What is the eternal

divine element in man? The other goes more deeply into the religious and

moral nature of man and considers the question: Where and how does divine

retribution—reward or punishment—take place in human life? To both of

these questions our modern view, with its special aim toward a unified

grasp of the totality of life, requires a special answer. This can be

neither that of rabbinic Judaism, which rests upon Persian dualism, nor

that of medieval philosophy, which was under the Platonic-Aristotelian

influence.

Chapter XLIV. The Immortal Soul of Man

1. The idea of immortality has been found in Scripture in a rather obscure

and probably corrupt passage,(908) “In the way of righteousness is life,

and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” In the same spirit Aquila,

the Bible translator, who belonged to the school of R. Eliezer and R.

Joshua, renders the equally obscure passage from the Psalms,(909) “He will

lead us to immortality,” reading _al maveth_, the Al with _Alef_, for _al

muth_, the Al with _Ayin_. There is more solid foundation for the view

that the verse, “God created man in His own image” implies that there is

an imperishable divine essence in man. In fact, that which distinguishes

man from the animal as well as from the rest of creation, both the starry

worlds above and the manifold forms of life on earth about him, is his

self-conscious personality, his ego, through which he feels himself akin

with God, the great world-ruling _I Am_. This self-conscious part of man,

which lends to his every manifestation its value and purpose, can no more

disappear into nothingness than can God, who called into existence this

world with all its phenomena, who set it in motion and directs it.

Whatever thought the crudest of men may have of his ego, his self,(910) or

however the most learned scholar may explain the marvelous action and

interaction of physical and psychical or spiritual forces which culminates

in his own self-conscious personality, it appears certain that this ego

cannot cease to be with the cessation of the bodily functions. There is in

us something divine, immortal, and the only question is wherein it may be

found.

2. The creation of man which is described in the Bible in the words, “God

formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the

breath of life, and man became a living soul”(911) corresponds to the

child-like conceptions of a primitive people. On the other hand, Scripture

speaks of death in parallel terms, “The dust returneth to the earth as it

was, and the spirit (Ruah, the life-giving breath) returneth unto God who

gave it.”(912)

The conception that the soul enters into man as the breath of life and

leaves him at his death, flying toward heaven like a bird,(913) is quite

as ancient and as universal as the other, that the soul descends into the

nether world as a shadowy image of the body, there to continue a dull

existence. The two are related to one another, and in the Bible, as well

as in the literature of other peoples, they have given rise to diverse

definitions of the soul. This was the point of departure for the

development of the conception of immortality in one or the other

direction, according to whether the body was considered a part of the

personality which somehow survives after death, or only the spiritual

substance of the soul was thought to live on in celestial regions as

something divine. The former led to the theory of the resurrection of the

body and its reunion with the soul; the latter to the belief in a future

life for the soul, after it had been separated or released from the body.

3. When once the soul was felt to be a “lamp of the Lord,” filling the

body with light when man is awake,(914) it was easy to imagine that the

soul had escaped and temporarily returned to God in sleep. This induced

the teachers of the Synagogue to prescribe a morning prayer of thanks

which reads, “Blessed art Thou, O God, who restorest the souls unto dead

bodies.”(915) The conception underlying this prayer throws light upon the

entire belief in resurrection. Death to the pious is only a prolonged

sleep. On that account the prophet in the passage from Isaiah already

referred to, as well as the Hasidic author of the Book of Daniel,(916)

could express the hope that “those who sleep in the dust shall awake.” As

at every awakening from sleep in the morning, so at the great awakening in

the future, the souls which have departed in death shall return again to

their bodies. These bodies could then hardly be conceived of as subject to

decomposition, and the picture in Ezekiel’s vision of resurrection(917)

had to be accepted as fact. Still R. Simeon b. Yohai in the especially

instructive thirty-fourth chapter of Pirke de R. Eliezer assumes the

complete disintegration of the body, in order to render the miracle of

resurrection so much the greater. Later still arose the legend of an

indestructible bone of the spinal column, called _Luz_, which was to form

the nucleus for the revival of the whole body.(918) The name Luz, which

denotes an almond tree and is the name given in the Bible to a city

also,(919) seemed to point to a connection with two legends, a fabulous

city into which death could not enter,(920) and the tree of resurrection

in the Osiris cycle.(921)

4. Still, no clear, consistent view of the soul prevailed as yet in the

rabbinic age. The popular belief, influenced by Persian notions, was that

the soul lingers near the body for a certain time after it has

relinquished it, either from three to seven days or for an entire

year.(922) Furthermore it was said that after death the souls hovered

between heaven and earth in the form of ghosts, able to overhear the

secrets of the future decreed above and to betray them to human beings

below. In fact, the rabbis of the Talmud, especially the Hasidim, never

hesitated to accept these ghost stories.(923) Some sages of the Talmudic

period taught that the souls of the righteous ascend to heaven, there to

dwell under the throne of the divine majesty, awaiting the time of the

renewal of the world, while the souls of the godless hovered over the

horizon of the earth as restless demoniacal spirits, finally to succumb to

the fate of annihilation, after they had been cast down into the fiery pit

of Gehenna or Sheol.(924) Of course, this view, which prevails in both the

Talmud and the New Testament, according to which the souls of the wicked

are to be consumed in the fire of Gehenna, is inconsistent with the

conception of the purely spiritual nature of the soul.

Nevertheless at this same epoch we find the higher idea expressed that the

soul is an invisible, god-like essence, pervading the body as a spiritual

force and differing from it in nature in much the same way as God is

differentiated from the world.(925) “Thou wishest to know where God

dwells, who is as high as are the heavens above the earth; tell me then

where dwells thy soul, which is so near,” replied R. Gamaliel to a

heathen.(926) The prevailing view of the schools is that God implants the

soul in the embryo while in the mother’s womb, together with all the

spiritual potentialities which make it human. In fact, R. Simlai, the

third-century Haggadist, advances the Platonic conception of the

preëxistence of the soul, as a being of the highest intelligence, which

sees before birth all things throughout the world, but forgets all at

birth, so that all subsequent learning is only a recollection.(927) In

Hellenistic Judaism especially the doctrine seems to have been general of

the preëxistence of the soul, or of the creation of all human souls

simultaneously with the creation of the world.(928) Of course, the soul

which emanates from a higher world must be eternal.

5. The first clear idea of the nature of the soul came with the

philosophically trained thinkers, who were dependent either on Plato, main

founder of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or on Aristotle,

who ascribes immortality only to the creative spirit of God, the supreme

Intelligence as a cosmic power. The nearest approach to Plato was

Philo,(929) who saw in the three Biblical names for the soul, _nefesh_,

_ruah_, and _neshama_, the three souls of the Platonic system,—the

sensuous soul, which has its seat in the abdomen; the courageous or

emotional soul, situated in the breast; and the intellectual soul, which

dwells in the brain and contains the imperishable divine nature. This last

is kept in its physical environment as in a prison or a grave, and ever

yearns for liberation and reunion with God. The soul of the righteous

enters the world of angels after death; that of the wicked the world of

demons.

Saadia, who was under the influence of Aristotle interpreted from the

neo-Platonic viewpoint, did not share the Platonic dualism of matter and

spirit, nor did he divide the soul into three parts, seated in various

parts of the human body. He finds the soul to be a spiritual substance

created simultaneously with the body, and uniting the three forces of the

soul distinguished in Scripture into one inseparable whole, the seat of

which is in the heart,—wherefore soul and heart are often synonymous in

the Bible. This indivisible substance possesses a luminous nature like

that of the spheres, but is simpler, finer, and purer than they, and

endowed with the power of thought. It was created by God out of the primal

ether from which He made the angels, simultaneously with the body and

within it. By this union it was qualified to display that moral activity

prescribed for it in the divine teaching, the neglect of which would

defile and tarnish it. According to Saadia some kind of material substance

adheres to the soul as well as to the angels, and on that account he does

not hesitate to accept the Talmudic expressions about the abode of the

soul after death, or the last judgment which is to take place as soon as

the appointed number of souls shall have made their entrance into their

earthly bodies, when the souls of the righteous will have their angelic

nature recognized, and those of the wicked will have their lower character

revealed. However, Saadia combats with so much greater fervor the Hindu

teaching of metempsychosis, which had been adopted by Plato and

Pythagoras.(930)

Bahya connects his theory with the three souls of Plato, and likewise

ascribes to the soul an ethereal essence.(931) He holds that its destiny

is to raise itself to the order of the angels through self-purification,

and finally to return to God as the divine Source of light. To this end

the intellectual soul, which has its being from the primal light, must

overcome the lower sensuous soul which leads to sin.

6. The conception that the soul is a substance derived from the luminous

primal matter, like the heavenly spheres and the angels, was now

persistently retained by the Jewish thinkers, who explained thereby its

immortality. In adopting the Aristotelian theory that the soul is the

form-principle of the body, the Platonic doctrine of its preexistence was

gradually relinquished, and its existence ascribed to a creative act of

God at the birth of the child or at its conception. But Jehuda ha-Levi,

the most pious of all the philosophers, emphasized vigorously the

indivisibility of the soul, its incorporeality and its reality apart from

the condition of the body, and—in opposition to the Aristotelian

free-thinkers, who expected the human soul to be absorbed into the divine

soul, the active intellect,—he declared the immortality of the individual

a fundamental article of faith.(932)

Now some of the Jewish thinkers, following Jehuda ha Levi, Ibn Daud, and

others, though Aristotelians, shrank from the logical conclusion of

denying all individuality to the soul, and attributed to it rather a

process of purification, which ends with the elevation of the soul-essence

to angelic rank and thus guarantees its immortality. Not so Maimonides,

who accepted with inexorable earnestness the Aristotelian idea of form as

the perfection of matter. The essence of the human soul is, for him, that

force or potentiality which qualifies it for the highest development of

the intellect, and is alone capable of grasping the divine. Yet it can

acquire a part in the creative World-spirit only in the same degree as it

unfolds this potentiality to share the divine intellect, whose seat is the

highest sphere of the universe. By dint of this acquired intelligence it

can live on as an independent intellect, in the image of God, and thus

attain beatitude in the contemplation of Divinity.(933)

7. Naturally the view of Maimonides, that a certain measure of immortality

is granted only to the wise,—though they must be morally perfect as

well,—aroused great opposition. Hasdai Crescas proves its untenableness by

asking, “Why shall the wise alone share in immortality? Furthermore, how

can something that came into existence in the course of human life

suddenly acquire eternal duration? Or how can there be any bliss in the

knowledge of God where there is no personality, no self-conscious ego to

enjoy it?” Therefore Crescas ascribed to the soul an indestructible

spiritual essence whose perfection is attained, not by mere intellect or

knowledge, but by love of God manifested in a religious and moral life,

and which is thereby made to share in eternal bliss.(934)

8. All these various thinkers find the future life either expressed or

suggested in the Scriptures as a truth based upon reason. This is

especially the conception of Abraham ibn Daud, who, contrary to his

Aristotelian successor Maimonides, sees in self-consciousness, by which

the soul differentiates itself from the body as a personality, the proof

that it cannot be subject to dissolution with the body.(935)

Besides the philosophic doctrine of the immortality of the soul, however,

the traditional belief in the resurrection of the body demanded some

consideration on the part of these philosophers. Saadia defends the latter

with all his might, endeavoring to reconcile the two as best he can.(936)

All the rest leave us in doubt whether resurrection is to be understood

literally or symbolically. Maimonides especially involves himself in

difficulties, inasmuch as in his commentary on the Mishna he considers the

resurrection of the dead an unalterable article of faith, whereas in his

Code(937) and in the Moreh he speaks only of immortality; and again before

the end of his life he wrote, obviously in self-defense, a work which

seems to favor bodily resurrection, yet without clarifying his conceptions

at any time.(938) The belief in resurrection had taken too deep a root in

the Jewish consciousness and had been too firmly established through the

liturgy of the Synagogue for any philosopher to touch it without injuring

the very foundations of faith.

Moreover, beside external caution a certain inner need seems to have

impelled toward the acceptance of resurrection. As soon as one thinks of

the soul as existing or continuing to live in an incorporeal state, one is

involuntarily led toward the belief in the soul’s preëxistence or even in

the possibility of metempsychosis. Thus it seemed more reasonable to

believe in a new formation of the human body together with a new creation

of the world. Therewith came the disposition to assign to the soul in the

future world a body of finer substance, like that assumed by the mystic

Nahmanides,(939) in order to assure to the new humanity a wondrous

duration of life like that of Elijah.

9. While the popular philosopher Albo rightly declares that the nature of

the soul is as far beyond all human understanding as is the nature of

God,(940) the mystics sought all the more to penetrate its secrets. The

Cabbalah also divides the soul into three different substances according

to the three Biblical names, assigning their origins to the three

different spheres of the universe, and reiterating the Platonic theory of

the preexistence of the soul and its future transmigration. This division

into three parts provided scope for all types of theories concerning the

soul in its sensuous, its moral, and its intellectual nature.

Fundamentally the Cabbalah considered the soul an emanation from the

divine intellect with a luminous character just like the philosophers. But

in the Platonic view of the ascending order of creation, which forms the

basis of the Cabbalah, this mundane life is an abyss of moral degradation,

so that the soul yearns toward the primal Source of light, finally to find

freedom and bliss with God.(941) Thus the later Cabbalah returned to the

teachings of Philo, the Jewish Plato, for whom death was only the

stripping off of the earthly frame in order to enter the pure and luminous

world of God.

10. With Moses Mendelssohn, who in his _Phædon_ tried to translate Plato’s

proof of immortality into modern terms, a new attitude toward the nature

and destiny of the soul arose in Judaism among both the philosophers and

the educated laity. Mendelssohn not only endeavored to prove the

immortality of the soul through its indivisibility and incorporeality, as

all the neo-Platonists and Jewish philosophers had done before him; he

also attempted to show from the harmonious plan which pervades and

controls all of God’s creation, that the soul may enter a sphere of

existence greater in extent and content than the little span of earthly

life which it relinquishes. The progress of the soul toward its highest

unfolding, unsatisfied in this life, demands a future growth in the

direction of god-like perfection.(942) At this point the philosopher

enters the province of faith, and thus furnishes for all time the cardinal

point of the belief in immortality. The divine spirit in man, which is

evinced in the self-conscious, morally active personality, bears within

itself the proof and promise of its future life. Moreover, this

corresponds with the belief in God as One who rules the world for the

eternal purposes and aims of perfection, who cannot deceive the hope of

the human heart for a continued living and striving onward and forward,

without thereby impairing His own perfection. For we all close our lives

without having attained the goal of moral and spiritual perfection toward

which we strive; and therefore our very nature demands a world where we

may reach the higher degree of perfection for which we long. In this sense

we may interpret the Psalmist’s verse: “I shall be satisfied, when I

awake, with (beholding) Thy likeness.”(943) That is: our spirit, when no

longer bound to the earth, shall behold the divine glory,—a vision which

transcends our powers of thought.

11. In the light of modern investigation, body and soul are seen to be

indissolubly bound together by a reciprocal relation which either benefits

or impedes them both. Wherein the spiritual bond exists that renders both

the physical organs with their muscular and nervous systems and the

magnetic or electric currents which set them in motion subservient to the

will of the intellect; what the mind actually _is_, into whose deepest

recesses science is casting its search-light to illumine its

processes,—these are problems which will probably remain ever incapable of

solution by human knowledge, and will therefore always afford new food for

the imagination. Yet it is just in periods like ours, when the belief in

God is weakening, that the human spirit is especially solicitous to guard

itself against the thought of the complete annihilation of its god-like

self-conscious personality. This gives rise to the superstitious effort to

spy out the soul by sensory means and to find ways of seeing or hearing

the spirits of the dead,—a tendency which is as dangerous to the spiritual

and moral welfare of humanity as was the ancient practice of

necromancy.(944) It is therefore all the more important to base the belief

in immortality solely on the God-likeness of the human soul, which is the

mirror of Divinity. Just as one postulate of faith holds that God, the

Creator of the world, rules in accordance with a moral order, so another

is the immortality of the human soul, which, amidst yearning and groping,

beholds God. The question where, and how, this self-same ego is to

continue, will be left for the power of the imagination to answer ever

anew.

12. Certainly it is both comforting and convenient to imagine the dead who

are laid to rest in the earth as being asleep and to await their

reawakening. As the fructifying rain awakens to a new life the seeds

within the soil, so that they rise from the depths arrayed in new raiment,

so, when touched by the heavenly dew of life, will those who linger in the

grave arise to a new existence, clad in new bodies. This is the belief

which inspired the pious founders of the synagogal liturgy even before the

period of the Maccabees, when they expressed their praise of God’s power

in that He would send the fertilizing rain upon the vegetation of the

earth, and likewise in due time the revivifying dew upon the sleeping

world of man. Both appeared to the sages of that age to be evidences of

the same wonder-working power of God. Whoever, therefore, still sees God’s

greatness, as they did, revealed through miracles, that is, through

interruptions of the natural order of life, may cling to the traditional

belief in resurrection, so comforting in ancient times. On the other hand,

he who recognizes the unchangeable will of an all-wise, all-ruling God in

the immutable laws of nature must find it impossible to praise God

according to the traditional formula as the “Reviver of the dead,” but

will avail himself instead of the expression used in the Union Prayer Book

after the pattern of Einhorn, “He who has implanted within us immortal

life.”(945)

Chapter XLV. Divine Retribution: Reward and Punishment.

1. The feeling of equity is deeply rooted in human nature, demanding

reparation for every wanton wrong and yielding recognition to every

benevolent act. In fact, upon this universal principle is based all

justice and to a certain extent all morality. Judaism of every age

compresses this demand of the religious and moral nature of man into the

doctrine: God rewards the good and punishes the evil. This doctrine, which

is the eleventh of Maimonides’ articles of faith, constitutes the

underlying presumption of all the Biblical narratives as well as of the

prophetic threats and warnings and those of the Mosaic law, in so far as

earthly success and prosperity were regarded as the rewards of God and

earthly misfortune and misery as His punishments. In the same degree,

however, as experience contradicted this doctrine, and as examples

multiplied of wicked persons revelling in prosperity and innocent ones

laboring under adversity and woe, it became necessary to defer the divine

retribution more and more to the future—at first to a future on earth and

later to one in the world to come, until finally it developed into a pure

spiritual conception in full accord with a higher ethical view of life.

2. As long as in the primitive process of law the family or the clan was

held responsible for the crime of the individual, ancient Israel also

adhered to the idea that “God visits the sins of the fathers upon the

third and fourth generation,” as Jeremiah still did(946) in full accord

with the second commandment. It was in a far later stage that the rabbis

interpreted the words “of those who hate Me” in the sense of individual

responsibility.(947) Only in accordance with the Deuteronomic law which

says: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither

shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put

to death for his own sin,”(948) did the religious consciousness rebel

against the thought that a later generation should suffer for the sins of

its ancestors, and hence the popular adage arose, “The fathers have eaten

sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.”(949) It is

the prophet Ezekiel who refutes once and for all the idea of a guilt

transmitted to children and consequently of hereditary sin and punishment,

insisting on the doctrine that personal responsibility alone determines

divine retribution.(950) But here a new element affects divine

retribution. God’s long-suffering and mercy do not desire the immediate

punishment, the death of the sinner. He should be given time to return to

a better mode of life.(951)

But the great enigma of human destiny, which vexes the author of the

seventy-third Psalm and that of the book of Job, still presses for a

better solution. It is true that the popular belief and popular legends

which are preserved in post-Biblical writings as well, insisted on a

justice which requites “measure for measure.”(952) Still insight into

actual life does not confirm the teaching of the popular philosophy that

the “righteous will be requited in the earth” and that “evil pursueth

sinners.”(953) The unshakeable belief in the justice of God had to find

another solution for life’s antinomies, and was forced to reach out for

another world in which the divine righteousness would find its complete

realization.

3. Biblical Judaism with few exceptions recognized only the present world

and the subterranean world of shadows, a view preserved in its essentials

by Ben Sira and the Sadducees, who were subsequently declared heretics. In

contrast to them Pharisaic or Rabbinic Judaism teaches a resurrection

after death for a life of eternal bliss or eternal torment, according as

the divine judgment finds one righteous and another wicked. We may leave

aside the consideration that the first impulse toward a Jewish belief in

resurrection came from the non-fulfillment of the national hope, wherefore

it was always bound up with the soil of the Holy Land, as will be seen in

Chapter LIV. The fact remains that the divine judgment to follow upon

resurrection was consistently regarded as a great world-judgment, which

was to decide the future lot of all men and spirits. It must be noted also

that the apocalyptic and midrashic literature often identifies the pious

with the God-fearing Israelites as those who shall arise to eternal life,

while the wicked are identified with the idolatrous heathen, who are

condemned to eternal death, or, as it is frequently expressed, to a second

death.(954)

4. Exactly as the old Persian Mazdaism expected the resurrection of all,

both good and bad, the believers in Ahura Mazda as well as the rest of

humanity, so the apocalyptic writers prior to the Talmudic period describe

resurrection as universal: “In those days the earth will give back those

who have been entrusted to her, and the nether-world will release that

which it has received,” according to Enoch LI, 1. Similarly fourth Esdras

remarks: “And after seven days of silence for all creatures, the new order

of the world shall be raised up, and mortality itself shall perish; and

the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her; and so shall the

dust give back those that dwell in silence; and the chambers shall deliver

those souls that were committed unto them. The Most High shall appear on

the throne of judgment, and shall say: Judgment only shall remain, truth

shall stand, and faith shall wax strong. The good deeds shall be of force,

and wicked deeds shall no longer sleep. The lake of torment shall be

revealed, and opposite to it the place of joy; the furnace of Gehinnom

will be visible, and opposite to it the bliss of Paradise. Then the Most

High will speak to the heathen nations, who have awakened: behold now Him

whom ye have denied, whom ye have not served, whose command ye have

abhorred. Gaze now here and there,—here bliss and rest, there fire and

torment.”(955)

The rabbinic form of the doctrine of resurrection is quite unambiguous:

“Those born into the world are destined to die; the dead, to live again;

and those who enter the world to come, to be judged.”(956) And wherever

the rabbinic or apocalyptic literature mentions the share of the pious, or

of Israel, in eternal life, this implies that, while these enter the world

to come, the evil-doers or idolaters shall enter hell for eternal death;

the understanding being that there is a universal resurrection for the

world-judgment.

5. The whole system of eschatology in connection with resurrection arose

undoubtedly from the Persian doctrine, according to which death together

with all that is evil and unclean is created by Ahriman, the evil

principle, and will suffer annihilation with him, as soon as the good

principle, Ahura Mazda, has achieved the final victory. Then Soshiosh “the

Savior,” the descendant of Zoroaster, will begin his kingdom of eternal

life for the righteous, coincident with the awakening of the dead.(957)

Pharisaic Judaism, however, gave the hope of resurrection a deeper moral

and religious meaning. The proofs, or rather analogies from nature, of the

seeds springing from the earth in a new form, of men awakening from sleep

in the morning, or of the original creation, are shared by the rabbis and

the New Testament writers with the Persians. On the other hand, proofs

based on the prophetic hope for the future are purely national. So also

are those proofs based on the Biblical passage that the God of the fathers

had sworn to the Patriarchs to give them the Promised Land.(958) Likewise

the reference to the wondrous resurrections related in the history of

Elijah and Elisha offers no proof of a universal resurrection. A striking

point and one which deepens the idea of retribution is the simile of the

Lame and the Blind(959) employed by Jehuda ha Nasi in a dialogue with the

Emperor Antoninus. The latter had said that at the last judgment both soul

and body might deny all guilt. The body may say: “The soul alone has

sinned, for since it has parted from me, I have lain motionless as a

stone.” And the soul, on its part, may reply: “It must be the body that

sinned, for since I have parted from it I soar about in the air free as a

bird.” To this Jehuda ha Nasi answered: “A king once possessed a garden

with splendid fig-trees, and appointed as watchmen in it a blind man and a

lame man. Then the lame man spoke to the blind man, ‘I see fine figs up

there; take me upon your shoulders, and I shall pick them, and we can

enjoy them together.’ They did so, and when the king entered the garden,

the figs were gone. But when they were held to account for it, the lame

man said, ‘How could I have taken them, since I cannot walk?’ And the

blind man said, ‘And I cannot see.’ Then the king had the lame man placed

upon the shoulders of the blind man and judged them both together. In like

manner will God treat the body and the soul, as it is said:(960) ‘He

calleth to the heavens above—that is, the heavenly element, the soul—and

to the earth beneath—the earthly body—and places them together before His

throne of judgment.’ ”

6. It cannot be denied that the idea that the soul and body, having

committed good or evil deeds together in this life, should receive in

common their reward or punishment in the world to come, satisfied the

Jewish sense of justice better than the conception developed by

Hellenistic Judaism (after the Platonic and, in the last resort, the

Egyptian view) that the soul alone should partake of eternal bliss or

torment. Nevertheless the philosophically trained Jewish thinkers of

Alexandria could not bring themselves to accept a bodily resurrection, and

therefore emphasized so much more strongly the great day of judgment and

the reward and punishment of the soul in the world to come. Still we find

much inconsistency among various authors, sometimes even in the same work,

in the conception of future bliss for the good and torture for the wicked.

These varied according to the more sensuous or more spiritual view taken

of the soul and the celestial world, and according to the literal or

figurative interpretation of the Biblical allusions to “fire,” “worms,”

and the like in the punishment of evil-doers, and of the delights awaiting

the righteous in the future.(961)

On this point free play was allowed to the imagination of the people and

the fancy of the Haggadists. Still, throughout, the solemn thought found

its echo that mortal man must give account to the inexorable Judge of the

living and the dead for the life just completed, in order to be ushered,

according to his deserts, into the portals of the celestial Paradise or of

hell.(962) This led to the view that this whole mundane life is but like a

wayfarers’ inn for the life to come, or the vestibule of the palace (more

precisely the “banquet-hall”) of the future.(963)

7. A further development of the principle of justice in application to

future retribution led not merely to such a depiction of the tortures of

hell and the delights of heaven that the maxim: “measure for measure,” so

often deviated from in this life, could find complete realization in the

world to come. An intermediate stage also was devised for those whose

merit or guilt would enroll them neither among the righteous for eternal

bliss, nor among the wicked for eternal punishment. While the stern

teachers of the school of Shammai insisted that these mediocre ones must

undergo a twelve-month process of purification in the fires of Gehenna,

the milder school of Hillel maintained that the divine mercy would grant

them admission into Paradise even without the fires of purgatory(964),

either through the merit of the patriarchs(965) or owing to the deserts of

a son who has been trained to reverence for God, as is indicated by the

legend concerning the Kaddish prayer.(966) In any case, the teaching of

Hillel concerning the all-sufficing mercy of God swept aside the old

hopeless conception that eternal suffering in hell awaits the average man,

which was adhered to by the Christian church in connection with its dogma

of the atoning blood of Christ. Likewise, in the dispute of schools as to

whether or not the bliss of eternal life would be accorded also to the

righteous among the heathen, the more humane view of Joshua ben Hananiah

prevailed over the gloomier one of the Shammaite Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, and

therefore the doctrine became generally accepted, “The righteous of all

nations shall have a share in the world to come.”(967)

8. The apocalyptic writers, who largely influenced the New Testament, and

also the Haggadists refer with fond interest to the banquet of the pious

in the world to come, where they would be served with heavenly manna as

bread, with wine preserved from the days of the creation, and with the

flesh of the Leviathan or the fruit of the Tree of Life.(968) On the other

hand they elaborated the tortures of the evil-doers in hell which are to

afford a pleasing sight to the pious in heaven, just as the torments of

the sinners are aggravated by the sight of the righteous enjoying all

delights.(969) But at the same time we meet with a more refined and

spiritual conception of future reward and punishment among the disciples

of R. Jehuda ha Nasi, in the Babylonian Rab, and the Palestinian R.

Johanan and his pupil Simeon ben Lakish. “In the future world,” says Rab,

“there are no sensual enjoyments nor passions, but the righteous sit at

the table of God with wreaths upon their heads (like the Greek sages at a

symposium!), feeding on the radiance of the divine majesty, as did the

chosen ones of Israel on the heights of Sinai.”(970) R. Johanan teaches,

“All the promises held forth in Scripture in definite form as reward for

the future, refer to the Messianic era, whereas in regard to the bliss

awaiting the pious in the world to come, the words of Isaiah hold good:

‘No eye hath seen it, O God, beside Thee.’ ”(971) Simeon ben Lakish even

went so far as to say, “There is neither hell nor paradise. Instead, God

sends out the sun in its full strength from its encasement, and the wicked

are consumed by its heat, while the pious find delight and healing in its

beams.”(972)

However, the popular imagination demanded more perceptible pictures of

heaven and hell, if fear of punishment was to deter men from sin, and hope

of reward to lead them to virtue. The description of the modes of reward

and punishment for the future in the Koran is the outcome of mingled

Persian and Jewish popular conceptions, and its crass sensuousness exerted

in turn a decisive influence upon the entire Gaonic period,(973) leaving

its mark upon even so clear a thinker as Saadia. Not only does he admit

into his philosophic work all the crude and conflicting descriptions of

the future world, but he also argues for the eternity of the punishments

of hell and of the delights of heaven as logical necessities, because only

such could sufficiently deter or allure mankind, and a righteous God must

certainly carry out His threats and promises.(974)

9. The entire Jewish philosophy or theology of the Middle Ages remained

under the influence of the traditional belief in resurrection. Even

Maimonides, whose purely spiritual conception of the soul and of salvation

is utterly irreconcilable with the belief in bodily resurrection, and who

accordingly dwells instead, in both his Moreh and his Code, on the future

world of spirits, with explicit emphasis on their incorporeality, did not

have the courage to break altogether with the traditional belief in

resurrection. In his apologetic treatise on resurrection he even attempts

to present it as a miraculous act of God beyond the grasp of the

intellect. He omits, however, to specify what purpose this miracle may

serve, since in the Maimonidean system reward and punishment would be

administered in the world of spirits in a much purer and more satisfactory

manner.(975) The same standpoint is taken also by Jehuda ha Levi as well

as by Crescas and Albo.(976) If then resurrection be a miracle, it falls

outside the scope of philosophic speculation and becomes a matter of

faith; accordingly the mystics from Nahmanides down to Manasseh ben Israel

associated with it the grossest conceptions.(977)

10. The actual view of Maimonides concerning future retribution is

expressed clearly and unambiguously in both his early product, the

commentary on the Mishna, and in the ripest fruit of his life work, the

Mishneh Torah, where he says “Not immortality, but the power to win

eternal life through the knowledge and the love of God is implanted in the

human soul. If it has the ability to free itself from the bondage of the

senses and by means of the knowledge of God to lift itself to the highest

morality and the purest thinking, then it has attained divine bliss, true

immortality, and it enters the realm of the eternal Spirit together with

the angels. If it sinks into the sensuousness of earthly existence, then

it is cut off from eternal life; it suffers annihilation like the beast.

In reality this life eternal is not the future, but is already potentially

present and invariably at hand in the spirit of man himself, with its

constant striving toward the highest. When the rabbis speak of paradise

and hell, describing vividly the delights of the one and the torments of

the other, these are only metaphors for the agony of sin and the happiness

of virtue. True piety serves God neither from fear of punishment nor from

desire for reward, as servants obey their master, but from pure love of

God and truth. Thus the saying of Ben Azai is verified, ‘The reward of a

good deed is the good deed itself.’(978) Only children need bribes and

threats to be trained to morality. Thus religion trains mankind. The

people who cannot penetrate into the kernel need the shell, the external

means of threats and promises.”(979) These splendid words of the great

thinker require supplementing or modification in only one direction, and

that has been afforded by the keenest critic among Jewish philosophers,

Hasdai Crescas. Too deeply enmeshed in the Aristotelian system, Maimonides

found the happiness and immortality of man solely in the acquired

intellectual power which becomes part of the divine intellect, and the

mere knowledge of God is to him tantamount to the blissful enjoyment of

the pious in the radiance of God’s majesty. Consequently those who strive

and soar heavenward through their moral conduct and noble aspirations,

without at the same time being thinkers, receive no reward. Against this

Aristotelian one-sidedness Crescas emphasizes God’s love and goodness for

which the righteous yearn, and in whose pursuit man finds perfection and

happiness. Not for the sake of attaining bliss shall we love God and

practice virtue and truth, but to love God and practice virtue is itself

true bliss. This is the nearness of God referred to by the Psalmist and

declared to be man’s highest good.(980) There is no need of any other

reward than this, and there is no greater punishment than to be deprived

of this boon forever.(981)

11. In the face of these two great thinkers, to whom Spinoza owes the

fundamental ideas of his ethics,(982) the question considered by Albo,

whether the eternal duration of the tortures of hell is reconcilable with

the divine mercy,(983) a question which still plays an important rôle in

Christian theology, and which was probably suggested to Albo through his

disputations with representatives of the Church,—is for us superfluous and

superseded. Our modern conceptions of time and space admit neither a place

or a world-period for the reward and punishment of souls, nor the

intolerable conception of eternal joy without useful action and eternal

agony without any moral purpose. Modern man knows that he bears heaven and

hell within his own bosom. Indeed, so much more difficult is the life of

duty which knows of no other reward than happiness through harmony with

God, the Father of the immortal soul, and of no other punishment than the

soul’s distress at its inner discord with the primal Source and the divine

Ideal of all morality. All the more powerfully is modern man controlled by

the thought that the universe permits no stagnation, no barren enjoyment

or barren suffering, but that every death marks the transition to a higher

goal for greater accomplishment. This yearning of the soul finds

expression in the Talmudic maxim, “The righteous find rest neither in this

world, nor in the world to come, as it is said, ‘They go from strength to

strength, until they appear before God on Zion.’ ”(984)

Chapter XLVI. The Individual and the Race

1. In every system of belief the object of divine care and guidance is the

individual. His soul and his conscience raise him up, especially according

to the Jewish doctrine, to the divine image, to Godchildship. His freedom

and moral responsibility are the patent of nobility for his divine nature;

his ego, controlling external forces and carrying out its own designs,

vouches for his immortality. Nevertheless the spirit of the Biblical

language indicates rightly that the individual is only a son of man,—_ben

adam_,—that is, a segment or member of the human race, but not the perfect

typical exemplification of the whole of mankind. From the social organism

he receives what he is, what he has, and what he ought to do, both his

nature and his destiny; and only in association with the community and

under the guidance of the highest ideal of humanity can he attain true

perfection. Only mankind as a whole, in its coöperation, as it extends

over the vast expanse of the earth, and in its succession which reaches

through the centuries of the world’s history, can bring to full

development the divine image in man, his moral and religious nature with

all its varied potentialities. It is man collectively who in the first

chapter of Genesis receives the command to subject the earth with all its

creatures to his cultural purposes.(985) In whatever stage of culture we

meet man, his modes of thought and speech, his customs and moral views,

even his spiritual faculties are the result of a long historic process of

development, the product of an extremely complicated past, as well as the

basis of a future which expands in all directions. The ancients expressed

this in their suggestive way, remarking in connection with the verse of

the Psalm, “Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance, and in Thy book

they were all written,”(986) that at the creation of the first man God

recorded the succession of races with their sages, seers and leaders until

the end of time.(987) And when the Haggadists say that in creating man God

took dust from every part of the world, so that he would be everywhere at

home,(988) again they were thinking of mankind. Similarly in the passage

from the Psalms, “Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before,” they explain

that God made the first man with two faces, one looking forward and the

other backward, that is, with a Janus head; and thus they regard man in

his relation to the past and the future, in his historic continuity.(989)

As both physically and spiritually he is the heir of innumerable ancestors

who have transmitted to him with their blood all their idiosyncrasies and

capacities in a peculiar combination, so will he transmit both consciously

and unconsciously the inherited possessions of mankind to future

generations for continued growth or for degeneration. He forms but a link

in the great chain of history, whose goal is the perfected ideal of

humanity, the completed idea of man. This was the underlying thought of

Ben Azzai in his dispute with R. Akiba, who held that the principal maxim

of Jewish teaching is “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In

opposition to this Ben Azzai presented as the most important lesson of the

Bible the verse which says, “This is the book of the generations of man;

in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him.”(990)

The godlikeness of man develops more and more through the evolution of the

human race. This is the basic force for all human love and all human

worth.

2. This social bond existing between the individual and the race imposes

upon him in accordance with his occupation certain duties in the same

degree as it confers benefits. Ben Zoma, a colleague of Ben Azzai,

expressed this as follows: When he saw great crowds of people together, he

exclaimed, “Praised be Thou who hast created all these to serve me.” In

explanation of this blessing he said, “How hard the first man in his

loneliness must have toiled, until he could eat a morsel of bread or wear

a garment, but I find everything prepared. The various workmen, from the

farmer to the miller and the baker, from the weaver to the tailor, all

labor for me. Can I then be ungrateful and be oblivious of my duty?”(991)

In the same sense he interprets the last verse in Koheleth, “This is the

end of the matter; fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the

whole duty of man.” That is to say, all mankind toils for him who does so.

Thus does human life rest upon a reciprocal relation, upon mutual

duty.(992)

3. Man is a social being who must strike root in many spheres of life in

order that the variegated blossoms and fruits of his spiritual and

emotional nature may sprout forth. The more richly the communal life is

specialized into professions and occupations, the more does the province

of the individual expand, and the more difficult it is for him to attain

perfection on all sides. According to his faculties and predisposition he

must always develop one or the other side of human endeavor and pursue now

the beautiful, now the good, now the true and now the useful, if as the

image of God he is to emulate the Ideal of all existence, the Pattern of

all creation. Consequently he may reflect some radiance of the divine

glory in his character and achievements, whether as moral hero, as sage

and thinker, as statesman and battler for freedom, as artist, or as the

discoverer of new forces and new worlds; and yet the full splendor of

God’s greatness is mirrored only by mankind as a whole through its

ceaseless common action and interaction. Therefore Judaism deprecates

every attempt to present a single individual, be he ever so noble or wise,

as the ideal of all human perfection, as a perfect man, free from fault or

blemish. “There is none holy as the Lord, for there is none beside Thee,”

says Scripture.(993) Instead of extolling any single mortal as the type or

ideal of perfection, our sages rather say with reference to the lofty

characters of the Bible: “There is no generation which cannot show a man

with the love for righteousness of an Abraham, or the nobility of spirit

of a Moses, or the love for truth of a Samuel.”(994) That is to say, every

age creates its own heroes, who reflect the majesty of God in their own

way.

4. As man is the keystone of all creation, so he is called upon to take

his full share in the progress of the race. “He who formed the earth

created it not a waste; He formed it to be inhabited,” says the

prophet.(995) True humanity has its seat, not in the life of the recluse,

but in the family circle, amid mutual love and loyalty between husband and

wife, between parents and children. The sages, with their keen insight

into the spirit of the Scripture, point to the fact that it is man and

wife together who first receive the name of “man,” because only the mutual

helpfulness and influence, the care and toil for one another draw forth

the treasures of the soul, and create relations which warrant permanency

and give promise of a future.(996)

5. Still the family circle itself is only a segment of the nation, which

creates speech and custom, and assigns to each person his share in the

common activity of the various classes of men. Only within the social bond

of the nation or tribe is the interdependence of all brought home to the

consciousness of the individual, together with all the common moral

obligations and religious yearnings. Through the few elect ones of the

nation or tribe, God’s voice is heard as to what is right in both custom

and law, and through them the individual is roused to a sense of duty. It

is society which enables the human mind to triumph over physical necessity

by ever new discoveries of tools and means of life, thus to attain freedom

and prosperity, and, through meditation over the continually expanding

realm of God’s world, to build up the various systems of science and of

art.

6. But the single nation also is too dependent upon the conditions of its

historic past, of its land and its racial characteristics, to bring the

divine image to its full development in a perfect man. Humanity as a whole

comes to its own, to true self-consciousness, only through the reciprocal

contact of race with race, through the coöperation of the various circles

and classes of life which extend beyond the narrow limits of nationality

and have in view common interests and aims, whether in the pursuit of

truth, in the achievement of good, or in the creation of the useful and

the beautiful. Only when the various nations and groups of men learn to

regard themselves as members of one great family, will the life of the

individual find its true value in relation to the idea and the ideal of

humanity. Then only will the unity and harmony of the entire cosmic life

find its reflection in the blending of the factors and forces of human

society.

7. Judaism has evolved the idea of the unity of mankind as a corollary of

its ethical monotheism. Therefore the Bible begins the history of the

world with the creation of Adam and Eve, the one human pair. The covenant

which God concluded after the flood with Noah, the father of the new

mankind, has its corresponding goal at the end of time in the divine

covenant which is to include all tribes of men in one great brotherhood;

and so also the dispersion of man through the confusion of tongues at the

building of the Tower of Babel has its counterpart in the rallying of all

nations at the end of time for the worship of the One and Only God in a

pure tongue and a united spirit on Zion’s heights.(997) Whatever the

civilizations of Greece and Rome and the Stoic philosophy have achieved

for the idea of humanity, Judaism has offered in its prophetic hope for a

Messianic future the guiding idea for the progress of man in history, thus

giving him the impulse to ceaseless efforts toward the highest of all aims

for the realization of which all nations and classes, all systems of faith

and thought, must labor together for millenniums to come.

Chapter XLVII. The Moral Elements of Civilization

1. Because Judaism sees the attainment of human perfection only when the

divine in man has reached complete development through the unimpeded

activity of all his spiritual, moral, and social forces, it insists upon

the full recognition of all branches of human society as instruments of

man’s elevation, either individually or collectively. It deprecates the

idea that any force or faculty of human life be regarded as unholy and

therefore be suppressed. It thus rejects on principle monastic

renunciation and isolation, pointing to the Scriptural verse, “He who

formed the earth created it not a waste; He formed it to be

inhabited.(998)”

2. Accordingly Judaism regards the establishment of family life through

marriage as a duty obligatory on mankind, and sees in the entrance into

the marital relation an act of life’s supreme consecration. In contrast to

the celibacy sanctioned by the Church and approved by the rabbis only

under certain conditions, and exceptionally for their holy exercises by

the Essenes, the Tannaite R. Eliezer pronounces the man who through

bachelorhood shirks the duty of rearing children to be guilty of murder

against the human race. Another calls him a despoiler of the divine image.

Another rabbi says that such a one renounces his privilege of true

humanity, in so far as only in the married state can happiness, blessing,

and peace be attained.(999) It is significant as to the spirit of Judaism

that, while other religions regard the celibacy of the priests and saints

as signs of highest sanctity, the Jewish law expressly commands that the

high priest shall not be allowed to observe the solemn rites of the Day of

Atonement if unmarried.(1000) Love for the wife, the keeper and guardian

of the home, must attune his heart to tenderness and sympathy, if he is to

plead for the people before the Holy God. He can make intercession for the

household of Israel only if he himself has founded a family, in which are

practiced faithfulness and modesty, love and regard for the

life-companion, all the domestic virtues inherited from the past.

3. Another moral factor for human development is industry, which secures

to the individual his independence and his dignity when he engages in

creative labor after the divine pattern, and which rewards him with

comfort and the joy of life. This also is so highly valued by Judaism that

industrial activity, which unlocks from the earth ever new treasures to

enrich human life, is enjoined upon all, even those pursuing more

spiritual vocations. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall

stand before kings.”(1001) “When thou eatest the labor of thy hands, happy

art thou and it shall be well with thee.”(1002) In commenting on this last

verse, the sages say: “This means that thou wilt be doubly blessed; happy

art thou in this world, and it shall be well with thee in the world to

come.”(1003) Again they say, “No labor, however humble, is

dishonoring,”(1004) also: “Idleness, even amid great wealth, leads to the

wasting of the intellect.”(1005) Moreover it is said, “Whoever neglects to

train his son to a trade, rears him to become a robber.”(1006) True, there

were some among the pious who themselves abstained from participation in

industry, and therefore proclaimed, in the same tenor as the Sermon on the

Mount, “Behold the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven, they sow

not and reap not, and their heavenly Father cares for them.”(1007) But

these formed an exception, while the majority of Jewish teachers extolled

the real blessing of labor and its efficacy in ennobling heart and

spirit.(1008)

4. Neither does Judaism begrudge man the joy of life which is the fruit of

industry, nor rob it of its moral value. On the contrary, that ascetic

spirit which encourages self-mortification and rigid renunciation of all

pleasure is declared sinful.(1009) Instead, we are told that in the world

to come man shall have to give account for every enjoyment offered him in

this life, whether he used it gratefully or rejected it in

ingratitude.(1010) Abstinence is declared to be praiseworthy only in

curbing wild desires and passions. For the rest, true piety lies in the

consecration of every gift of God, every pleasure of life which He has

offered, and using it in His service, so that the seal of holiness shall

be imprinted even upon the satisfaction of the most sensuous desires.

5. Judaism, then, lays special emphasis upon sociability as advancing all

that is good and noble in man. The life of the recluse, according to its

teaching, is of little use to the world at large and hence of no moral

value. Only in association with one’s fellow-men does life find incentive

and opportunity for worthy work. “Either a life among friends or death” is

a Talmudic proverb.(1011) Unselfish friendship like that of David and

Jonathan is lauded and pointed out for imitation.(1012) Through it man

learns to step beyond the narrow boundaries of his ego, and in caring for

others he will purify and exalt his own soul, until at last its love will

include all mankind.

6. “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his

friend,” says the book of Proverbs,(1013) and the sages derive from this

verse the doctrine that learning does not thrive in solitude.(1014) A

single log does not nourish the flame; to keep up the fire one must throw

in one piece of wood after the other. This applies also to learning; it

lacks in vigor, if it is not communicated to others. Wisdom calls to her

votaries on the highways, in order that the stream of knowledge may

overflow for many. For both the culture of the intellect and the ennobling

of the soul it is necessary that man should step out of the narrow limits

of self and come into touch with a larger world. Only in devotion to his

fellows is man made to realize his own godlike nature. In the same measure

as he honors God’s image in others, in foe as well as in friend, in the

most lowly servant as well in the most noble master, man increases his own

dignity. This is the fundamental thought of morality as expressed in Job,

especially in the beautiful thirty-first chapter, and as embodied in

Abraham,(1015) and later reflected in various Talmudic sayings about the

dignity of man.(1016) Everywhere man’s relation to society becomes a test

of his own worth. The idea of interdependence and reciprocal duty among

all members of the human family forms the outstanding characteristic of

Jewish ethics. For it is far more concerned in the welfare of society than

in that of the individual, and demands that those endowed with fortune

should care for the unfortunate, the strong for the weak, and those

blessed with vision for the blind. As God Himself is Father to the

fatherless, Judge of the widows, and Protector of the oppressed, so should

man be. “Works of benevolence form the beginning and the end of the

Torah,” points out R. Simlai.(1017)

7. It is in the life of the nation that the individual first realizes that

he is only a part of a greater whole. The nation to which he belongs is

the mother who nourishes him with her spirit, teaches him to speak and to

think, and equips him with all the means to take part in the achievements

and tasks of humanity. In fact, the State, which guarantees to all its

citizens safety, order and opportunity under the law, and which arranges

the relations of the various groups and classes of society that they may

advance one another and thus promote the welfare and progress of all, is

human society in miniature. Here the citizen first learns obedience to the

law which is binding upon all alike, then respect and reverence for the

authority embodied in the guardians of the law who administer justice

“which is God’s,” and hence also loyalty and devotion to the whole,

together with reciprocal obligation and helpfulness among the separate

members and classes of society. The words of Jeremiah to his exiled

brethren, “Seek ye the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be

carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace

thereof shall ye have peace,”(1018) became the guiding maxim of Jewry when

torn from its native soil. It impressed upon them, once for all, the

deeply rooted virtues of loyalty and love for the country in which they

dwelt. To pray for the welfare of the State and its ruler, under whose

dominion all citizens were protected, and so in modern times for its

legislative and administrative authorities, has become a sacred duty of

the Jewish religious community. To sacrifice one’s life willingly, if need

be, for the welfare of the country in which he lived, was a demand of

loyalty which the Jew has never disregarded. “The law of the State is as

the law of God”(1019) taught Samuel the Babylonian, and another sage of

Babylon said, “The government on earth is to be regarded as an image of

God’s government in heaven.”(1020)

8. But, after all, the community of the State or the nation is too

confined in its cultural work by its special interests and particular

tasks ever to reach the universal ideal of man, that is, a perfected

humanity. Where the interests of one State or nation come into conflict

with those of another, far too often the result is enmity and murderous

warfare. Therefore there must be a higher power to quench the brands of

war whenever they flare up, to cultivate every motive leading toward peace

and harmony among nations, to impel men toward a higher righteousness and

to obviate all conflict of interests, because in place of selfishness it

implants in the heart the self-forgetfulness of love. Religion is the

power which trains peoples as well as individuals toward the conception of

one humanity, in the same measure as it points to the one and only God,

Ruler over all the contending motives of men, the Source and Shield of all

righteousness, truth, and love, the Father of mankind as the only

foundation upon which the grand edifice of human civilization must

ultimately rest. Thus it teaches us to regard the common life and endeavor

of peoples and societies as one household of divine goodness. Every system

of belief, every religious denomination which transcends the limits of the

national consciousness with a view to the broader conception of mankind,

and binds the national groups and interests into a higher unity to include

and influence all the depths and heights of the human spirit, paves the

way toward the attainment of the mighty goal. In the same sense the united

efforts of the various classes and societies or States for the common

advance of culture, prosperity, national welfare and international

commerce, as well as of science and art, tend unceasingly toward that full

realization of the idea of humanity which constitutes the brotherhood of

man.

9. Not yet has any religious body, however great and remarkable its

accomplishments may have been, nor any of the religious, scientific, or

national organizations, much as they have achieved, performed the sublime

task which the prophets of Israel foretold as the goal of history. Each

one has drawn to itself only a portion of mankind, and promised it success

or redemption and bliss, while the rest have been excluded and denied both

temporal and eternal happiness. Each one has singled out one side of human

nature in order to link to it the entire absolute truth, but at the same

time has underestimated or cast aside all other sides of human life, and

thereby blocked the road to complete truth, which can never be presented

in final form, nor ever be the exclusive possession of one portion of

humanity. Judaism, which is neither a religious nor a national system

_solely_, but aims to be a _covenant with God_ uniting all peoples, lays

claim to no exclusive truth, and makes its appeal to no single group of

mankind. The Messianic hope, which aims to unite all races and classes of

men into a bond of brotherhood, has become an impelling force in the

history of the world, and both Christianity and Islam, in so far as they

owe their existence to this hope and to the adoption of Jewish teachings,

constitute parts of the history of Judaism. Between these world-religions

with their wide domains of civilization stands the little Jewish people as

a cosmopolitan element. It points to an ideal future, with a humanity

truly united in God, when, through ceaseless progress in the pursuit of

ever more perfect ideals, truth, justice, and peace will triumph,—to the

realization of the kingdom of God.

PART III. ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Chapter XLVIII. The Election of Israel

1. The central point of Jewish theology and the key to an understanding of

the nature of Judaism is the doctrine, “God chose Israel as His people.”

The election of Israel as the chosen people of God, or, what amounts to

the same, as the nation whose special task and historic mission it is to

be the bearer of the most lofty truths of religion among mankind, forms

the basis and the chief condition of revelation. Before God proclaimed the

Ten Words of the Covenant on Sinai, He addressed the people through His

chosen messenger, Moses, saying: “Ye have seen what I did unto the

Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto

Myself. Now therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice, indeed, and keep

My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples,

for all the earth is Mine; and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests,

and a holy nation.”(1021)

2. The fact of Israel’s election by God as His peculiar nation is repeated

in Deuteronomy, with the special declaration that God had found delight in

them as the smallest of the peoples, on account of the love and the faith

He had sworn to the Patriarchs.(1022) It is accentuated in the Synagogal

liturgy, especially in the prayer for holy days which begins with the

words: “Thou hast chosen us from all peoples; Thou hast loved us and found

pleasure in us and hast exalted us above all tongues; Thou hast sanctified

us by Thy commandments and brought us near unto Thy service, O King, and

hast called us by Thy great and holy name.”(1023) Inasmuch as the election

of Israel is connected with the deliverance of the people from Egypt, the

whole relation of the Jewish nation to its God assumes from the outset an

essentially different character from that of other nations to their

deities. The God of Israel is not inseparably connected with His people by

mere natural bonds, as is the case with every other ancient divinity. He

is not a national God in the ordinary sense. He has chosen Israel freely

of His own accord. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of

Egypt I called My son,” says God through Hosea,(1024) and thus prefers to

call Himself “thy God from the land of Egypt.” This election from love is

echoed also in Jeremiah, who said, “Israel is the Lord’s hallowed portion,

His first-fruits of the increase.”(1025) The moral relation between God

and Israel is most clearly characterized, however, by Amos, in the words:

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will

visit upon you all your iniquities.”(1026) Here is stated in explicit

terms that the God of history selected Israel as an instrument for His

plan of salvation, in the expectation that he would remain faithful to His

will.

3. The real purpose of the election and mission of Israel was announced by

the great prophet of the Exile when he called Israel the “servant of the

Lord,” who has been formed from his mother’s bosom and delivered from

every other bondage, in order that he may declare the praise of God among

the peoples, and be a harbinger of light and a bond of union among the

nations, the witness of God, the proclaimer of His truth and righteousness

throughout the world.(1027) The entire history of Israel as far back as

the Patriarchs was reconstructed in this light, and we find the election

of Abraham also similarly described in the Psalms(1028) and in the

liturgy. Indeed, in every morning prayer for the past two thousand years

the Jewish people have offered thanks to God for the divine teaching that

has been intrusted to their care, and praised Him “who has chosen Israel

in love.”(1029)

4. The belief in the election of Israel rests on the conviction that the

Jewish people has a certain superiority over other peoples in being

especially qualified to be the messenger and champion of religious truth.

In one sense this prerogative takes into account every people which has

contributed something unique to any department of human power or

knowledge, and therein has served others as pattern and guide. From the

broader standpoint, all great historic peoples appear as though appointed

by divine providence for their special cultural tasks, in which others can

at most emulate them without achieving their greatness. Yet we cannot

speak in quite the same way of the election of the Greeks or Romans or of

the nations of remote antiquity for mastery in art and science, or for

skill in jurisprudence and statecraft. The fact is that these nations were

never fully conscious that they had a historic or providential destiny to

influence mankind in this special direction. Israel alone was

self-conscious, realizing its task as harbinger and defender of its

religious truth as soon as it had entered into its possession. Its

election, therefore, does not imply presumption, but rather a grave duty

and responsibility. As the great seer of the Captivity had already

declared, to be the servant of the Lord is to undergo the destiny of

suffering, to be “the man of sorrow,” from whose bruises comes healing

unto all mankind.(1030)

5. Accordingly the election of Israel cannot be regarded as a single

divine act, concluded at one moment of revelation, or even during the

Biblical period. It must instead be considered a divine call persisting

through all ages and encompassing all lands, a continuous activity of the

spirit which has ever summoned for itself new heralds and heroes to

testify to truth, justice, and sublime faith, with an unparalleled scorn

for death, and to work for their dissemination by words and deeds and by

their whole life. Judaism differs from all other religions in that it is

neither the creation of one great moral teacher and preacher of truth, nor

seeks to typify the moral and spiritual sublimity which it aims to develop

in a single person, who is then lifted up into the realm of the

superhuman. Judaism counts its prophets, its sages, and its martyrs by

generations; it is still demonstrating its power to reshape and regenerate

religion as a vital force. Moreover, Judaism does not separate religion

from life, so as to regard only a segment of the common life and the

national existence as holy. The entire people, the entire life, must bear

the stamp of holiness and be filled with priestly consecration. Whether

this lofty aim can ever be completely attained is a question not to be

decided by short-sighted humanity, but only by God, the Ruler of history.

It is sufficient that the life of the individual as well as that of the

people should aspire toward this ideal.

6. Of course, the election of Israel presupposes an inner calling, a

special capacity of soul and tendency of intellect which fit it for the

divine task. The people which has given mankind its greatest prophets and

psalmists, its boldest thinkers and its noblest martyrs, which has brought

to fruition the three great world-religions, the Church, the Mosque,

and—mother of them both—the Synagogue, must be the religious people _par

excellence_. It must have within itself enough of the heavenly spark of

truth and of the impetus of the religious genius as to be able and eager,

whenever and wherever the opportunity is favorable, to direct the

spiritual flight of humanity toward the highest and holiest. In fact, the

soul of the Jewish people reveals a peculiar mingling of characteristics,

a union of contrasts, which makes it especially fit for its providential

mission in history. Together with the marked individuality of each person

we find a common spirit highly sensitive to every encroachment. Here there

is a tenacious adherence to what is old and traditional, and there an

eager assimilation of what is new and strange. On the one hand, a

materialistic self-interest; on the other, an idealism soaring to the

stars.(1031) The sages of the Tannaitic period already remarked that

Israel has been intrusted with the law which it is to defend and to

disseminate, just because it is the boldest and most obstinate of

nations.(1032) On the other hand, the three special characteristics of the

Jewish people according to the Talmud are its chastity and purity of life,

its benevolence and its active love for humanity.(1033) A heathen scoffer

calls Israel “a people of generous impulses which promised at Sinai to do

what God would command, even before it had hearkened to the

commandments.”(1034) “Gentle and shy as a dove, it is also willing like

the dove to stretch out its neck for the sacrifice, for love of its

heavenly Father,” says the Haggadist.(1035) And yet R. Johanan remarks

that Israel, called to be the bearer of light to the world, must be

pressed like the olive before it will yield its precious oil.(1036) Every

individual in Israel possesses the requisite qualities for a holy

priest-people, according to a Midrash of the Tannaitic period, and hence

we read in Deuteronomy, “The Lord hath chosen thee to be His own treasure

out of all peoples that are upon the face of the earth.”(1037)

7. All these and similar sayings disprove completely the idea that the

election of Israel was an arbitrary act of God. It is due rather to

hereditary virtues and to tendencies of mind and spirit which equip Israel

for his calling. To this must be added the important fact that God

educated the people for its task through the Law, which was to make it

conscious of its priestly sanctity and keep it ever active in mind and

heart. The election of Israel is emphasized in Deuteronomy especially in

connection with the prohibition of marriage with idolaters and with the

prohibition of unclean animals, which also originated in the priestly

laws.(1038) The underlying idea is that the mission of Israel to battle

for the Most High imperatively demands separation from the heathen

peoples, and on the other hand, that its priestly calling necessitates an

especial abstinence. And as has the law in its development and realization

for thousands of years, so has also God’s wise guidance trained Israel in

the course of history so as to render him at times the unyielding

preserver and defender and at other times the bold champion and

protagonist of the highest truth and justice, according as the outlook and

the mental horizon of the period were narrow or broad.

8. It is true that the thought of Israel’s calling and mission in

world-history first became clear when its prophets and sages attained a

view of great world-movements from the lofty watch-tower of the centuries,

so that they could take cognizance of the varying relations of Judaism to

the civilized peoples around. The summons of the Jewish people to be

heralds of truth and workers for peace is first mentioned in Isaiah and

Micah,(1039) while only in the great movement of nations under Cyrus did

the seer of the Exile recognize the peculiar mission of Israel in the

history of the world. If in gloomy periods the outlook became dark, still

the hope for the fulfillment of this mission was never entirely lost. In

fact, the contact of the Jewish people with Greek culture after Alexander

the Great gave new power and fresh impetus to the conception of Israel’s

mission,(1040) as the rich Hellenistic literature and the vision of Daniel

in chapter VII testify. In fact, Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish

people, became for the earliest Haggadists a wandering missionary and a

great preacher of the unity of God, and his picture was the pattern for

both Paul and Mohammed.(1041) The election of Israel is clearly and

unequivocally expressed by Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedath in the words, “God

sent Israel among the heathen nations that they may win a rich harvest of

proselytes, for, as God said through Hosea, ‘I will sow her unto Me in the

land,’ so He wishes from this seed to reap a bountiful and world-wide

harvest.”(1042)

9. In the Middle Ages, when the historical viewpoint and the idea of human

progress were both lacking, the belief in the mission of Israel was

confined to the Messianic hope. Both Jehuda ha Levi and Maimonides,

however, regard Christianity and Islam as preparatory steps for the

Messiah, who is to unify the world through the knowledge of God.(1043)

“The work of the Messiah is the fruit, of which Israel will be universally

acknowledged as the root,” says the Jewish sage in the Cuzari. Therefore

he rightly accepts the election of Israel as a fundamental doctrine of

belief. Modern times, however, with their awakened historical sense and

their idea of progress, have again placed in the foreground the belief in

the election and mission of Israel. The founders of reform Judaism have

cast this ancient doctrine in a new form. On the one hand, they have

reinterpreted the Messianic hope in the prophetic spirit, as the

realization of the highest ideals of a united humanity. On the other, they

have rejected the entire theory that Israel was exiled from his ancient

land because of his sins, and that he is eventually to return there and to

restore the sacrificial cult in the Temple at Jerusalem. Therefore the

whole view concerning Israel’s future had to undergo a

transformation.(1044) The historic mission of Israel as priest of humanity

and champion of truth assumed a higher meaning, and his peculiar position

in history and in the Law necessarily received a different interpretation

from that of Talmudic Judaism or that of the Church. As individuals,

indeed, many Jews have taken part in the achievements and efforts of all

civilized peoples; the Jewish people as such has accomplished great things

in only one field, the field of religion. The following chapters will

consider more closely how Judaism has taken up and carried out this sacred

mission.

Chapter XLIX. The Kingdom of God and the Mission of Israel

1. The hope of Judaism for the future is comprised in the phrase, “the

kingdom of God,”—_malkuth shaddai_ or _malkuth Shamayim_,—which means the

sovereign rule of God. From ancient times the liturgy of the Synagogue

concludes regularly with the solemn _Alenu_, in which God is addressed as

the “King of kings of kings”—king of kings being the Persian title for the

ruler of the whole Empire—and directly after this the hope is expressed

that “we may speedily behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt remove

the abominations from the earth, and the idols will be utterly cut off;

when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty, and

all the children of flesh will call upon Thy name; when Thou wilt turn

unto Thyself all the wicked of the earth. Let all the inhabitants of the

earth perceive and know that unto Thee every knee must bend, and every

tongue give homage. Let them all accept the yoke of Thy kingdom, and do

Thou reign over them speedily, and forever and ever.”(1045) At the close

of the Torah lesson in the house of learning the assembly regularly

recited the blessing, “Praised be Thy name! May Thy kingdom soon

come!”—afterwards known as the _Kaddish_,(1046) and reëchoed in the

so-called “Lord’s Prayer” of the Church. The words of the prophet, “The

Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord be One,

and His name One,”(1047) voiced for all ages this ideal of the future, and

thus gave a goal and a purpose to the history of the world and at the same

time centered it in Israel, the chosen people of God.

2. The establishment of the kingdom of the One and Only God throughput the

entire world constitutes the divine plan of salvation toward which,

according to Jewish teaching, the efforts of all the ages are tending.

This “Kingdom of God” is not, however, a kingdom of heaven in the world to

come, which men are to enter only after death, and then only if redeemed

from sin by accepting the belief in a supernatural Savior as their

Messiah, as is taught by the Church. Judaism points to God’s Kingdom on

_earth_ as the goal and hope of mankind, to a world in which all men and

nations shall turn away from idolatry and wickedness, falsehood and

violence, and become united in their recognition of the sovereignty of

God, the Holy One, as proclaimed by Israel, His servant and herald, the

Messiah of the nations. It is not the hope of bliss in a future life

(which is the leading motive of Christianity), but the building up of the

divine kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among men by Israel’s teaching

and practice.(1048) In this sense God speaks through the mouth of the

prophet, “I will also give thee for a light of the nations, that My

salvation may be unto the end of the earth.”(1049) “All the ends of the

earth shall see the salvation of our God.”(1050) “The remnant of Jacob

shall be in the midst of many peoples, as dew from the Lord, as showers

upon the grass.”(1051)

3. Clearly, the idea of a world-kingdom of God arose only as the result of

the gradual development of the Jewish God-consciousness. It was necessary

at first that the prophetic idea of God’s kingship, the theocracy in

Israel, should triumph over the monarchical view and absorb it. The

patriarchal life of the shepherd was certainly not favorable to a

monarchical rule. “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule

over you, the Lord shall rule over you,” said Gideon in refusing the title

of king which the people had offered him.(1052) According to one tradition

Samuel blamed the people for desiring a king and thereby rejecting the

divine kingship.(1053) “I give thee a king in Mine anger,” says God

through Hosea.(1054) The more the monarchy, with its exclusively worldly

and materialistic aims, came into conflict with the demands of the

prophets and their religious truth, the higher rose the prophetic hope for

the dawning of a day when God alone would rule in absolute sovereignty

over the entire world. Now, in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, with its

frequently changing dynasties, the old patriarchal conception was

dominant, while in the kingdom of Judah, which remained loyal to the house

of David, the monarchical idea developed. Isaiah, living in Jerusalem and

favorably disposed towards the monarchy, prophesied that a shoot from the

house of David, endowed with marvelous spiritual powers, should come

forth, occupying the throne in the place of God, and through his victories

would plant righteousness and the knowledge of God everywhere upon earth,

and establish throughout the world a wonderful reign of peace.(1055) Upon

this royal “shoot” of David(1056) rested the Messianic hope during the

Exile, and amidst the disappointments of the time this vision became all

the more idealized. In contrast to this the great prophet of the Exile

announced the establishment of the absolute dominion of God as the true

“King of Israel”(1057) over all the earth by the nucleus of Israel, “the

servant of God,” who would become conscious of his great historic mission

in the world and be willing to offer his very life in its cause. In all

this the prophet makes no reference to the royal house of David, but makes

bold to confer the title of the “anointed of God”—that is, Messiah—upon

Cyrus, the king of Persia, as the one who was to usher in the new

era.(1058) Subsequently these two divergent hopes for the future run

parallel in the Psalms and the liturgy as well as in the apocryphal and

rabbinic literature.

4. While the Messianic aspirations as such bore rather a political and

national character in Judaism (as will be explained in Chapter LIII), yet

the religious hope for a universal kingdom of God took root even more

deeply in the heart of the Jewish people. It created the conception of

Israel’s mission and also the literature and activity of the Hellenistic

propaganda, and it gave a new impetus to the making of proselytes among

the heathen, to which both Christianity and Islam owe their existence. The

words of Isaiah, repeated later by Habakkuk, “The earth will be full of

the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,”(1059) became now

an article of faith. While in earlier times the rule of Israel’s God,

JHVH, was attached to Zion, from whose holy mount He ruled as invisible

King,(1060) later on we find Zechariah proclaiming Him who was enthroned

in heaven as having dominion over the entire earth,(1061) and the Psalter

summons all nations to acknowledge, adore, and extol Him as King of the

world.(1062) Nay, at the very time when Judah lay humbled to the ground,

the prophet exclaimed, “Who would not fear Thee, O King of the nations?

for it befitteth Thee; forasmuch as among all the wise men of the nations,

and in all their royalty there is none like unto Thee.”(1063) Israel’s

great hope for the future is expressed most completely and in most sublime

language in the New Year liturgy: “O Lord our God, impose Thine awe upon

all Thy works, and let Thy dread be upon all that Thou hast created, that

they may all form one single band to do Thy will with a perfect heart....

Our God and God of our fathers, reveal Thyself in Thy splendor as King

over all the inhabitants of the world, that every handiwork of Thine may

know that Thou hast made it, and every creature may acknowledge that Thou

hast created it, and whatsoever hath breath in its nostrils may say: the

Lord God of Israel is King, and His dominion ruleth over all.”(1064)

5. In the earlier period, then, the rule of JHVH seems to have been

confined to Israel as the people of His covenant. During the Second Temple

Jerusalem was called the “city of the great King”(1065) and the

constitution was considered by Josephus to have been a theocracy, that is,

a government by God.(1066) Indeed, the entire Mosaic code has as its main

purpose to make Israel a “kingdom of priests,” over which JHVH, the God of

the covenant, was alone to rule as King. The chief object of the strict

nationalists, in opposition to the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenists, was

that this government of God, in its intimate association with the Holy

Land and the Holy People, should be maintained unchanged for all the

future. Thus the book of Daniel predicts the speedy downfall of the fourth

world-kingdom and the establishment of the kingdom of God through Israel,

“the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom is an

everlasting kingdom.”(1067) Naturally, such a purely nationalistic

conception of the rulership of God does not admit the thought of a mission

or its corollary, the conversion of the heathen.(1068) These appear among

the liberal school of Hillel in their opposition to the more rigorous

Shammaites and the party of the Zealots.(1069) It is, therefore, quite

consistent that the modern nationalists should again dispute the mission

of Israel.

6. As soon as Jewish monotheism had once been conceived by the Jewish mind

as the universal truth, the idea of the mission of Israel as a bearer of

light and a witness of God for the nations, as enunciated by

Deutero-Isaiah, became ever more firmly established. Many Psalms exhort

the people to make known the wondrous doings of God among the nations, so

that the heathen world might at last acknowledge the One and Only

God.(1070) Nay, Israel is even called God’s anointed and prophet,(1071)

and in one Psalm we find Zion, the city of God, elevated to be the

religious metropolis of the world.(1072) The book of Jonah is simply a

refutation of the narrow nationalistic conception of Judaism; it holds

forth the hope of the conversion of the heathen to the true knowledge of

God. In the same spirit Ruth the Moabitess became the type of the heathen

who are eager to “take refuge under the wings of God’s majesty.”(1073) The

author of the book of Job no longer knows of a national God; to him God is

the highest ideal of morality as it lives and grows in the human heart.

The wisdom literature also teaches a God of humanity. Under His wings Shem

and Japheth, the teaching of the Jew and the wisdom of the Greek, can join

hands; the religious truth of the one and the philosophic truth of the

other may harmoniously blend.

7. Thus a new impulse was given to Jewish proselytism in Alexandria, and

the earlier history of Israel, especially the pre-Israelite epoch with its

simple human types, was read in a new light. Enoch(1074) and Noah(1075)

became preachers of penitence, heralds of the pure monotheism from which

the heathen world had departed. Abraham especially, the progenitor of

Israel, was looked upon as a prototype of the wandering missionary people,

converting the heathen.(1076) Wherever he journeyed, his teaching and his

example of true benevolence won souls for the Lord proclaimed by him as

the “God of the heaven and the earth.”(1077) In this sense of missionary

activity were now interpreted the words, “Be thou a blessing ... and in

thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”(1078) This was no

longer understood in the original sense, that Abraham by his prosperity

should be an example of a blessed man, to be pointed out in blessing

others; the words were given the higher meaning that Abraham with his

descendants should become a source of blessing for mankind through his

teachings and his conduct, so that all the families of men should attain

blessing and salvation by following his doctrine and example. Thus the

idea of the Jewish mission was connected with Abraham, the “father of a

multitude of nations,”(1079) and this was later on adopted by Paul and

Mohammed in establishing the Church and the Mosque.

8. In contradistinction, then, to the political concept of the kingdom of

God, which Ezekiel still hoped to see established by the exercise of

external power,(1080) the idea assumed now a purely spiritual meaning.

This kingdom of God is accepted by the pious Jew every morning through his

confession of the divine Unity in the Shema. Abraham had anticipated this,

say the rabbis, when he swore by the God of heaven and earth, and so also

had Israel in accepting the Torah at Sinai and at the Red Sea.(1081) In

fact, the kingdom of God began, we are told, with the first man, since,

when he adored God freely as King of the world, every living creature

acknowledged Him also. But only when Israel as a people proclaimed God’s

dominion at the Red Sea, was the throne of God and His kingdom on earth

established for eternity.(1082) And when Ezekiel says: “With a mighty hand

will I be King over you,” they explain this to mean that the people chosen

as the servant of God will be continually constrained anew by the prophets

to recognize His kingdom.(1083) Yea, the closing words of the Song at the

Red Sea, “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever” were taken to imply that

all the nations would in the end recognize only Israel’s One God as King

of the world.(1084) As a matter of fact, the rabbinical view is that every

proselyte, in “taking upon himself the yoke of the sovereignty of God,”

enters that divine Kingdom which at the end of time will embrace all men

and nations.(1085) In the book of Tobit and the Sibylline Oracles also we

find this universalistic conception of the Messianic age expressed.(1086)

9. Accordingly, proselytism found open and solemn recognition both before

and after the time of the Maccabees, as we see in the Psalms,—especially

those which speak of proselytes in the term, “they that fear the

Lord,”(1087) and also in the ancient synagogal liturgy, where the

“proselytes of righteousness” are especially mentioned.(1088) The school

of Hillel followed precisely this course. Matters changed, however, under

the Roman dominion, which was contrasted to the dominion of God especially

from the time of Herod, when the belief became current that “only when the

one is destroyed, will the other arise.”(1089) Particularly after the

Christian Church had become identified with Rome, all missionary endeavors

by the Jews were considered dangerous and were therefore discouraged as

much as possible. In their place arose the hope for a miraculous

intervention of God. In Hellenistic circles the Messiah was believed to be

the future founder of the kingdom of God,(1090) which assumed more and

more of an other-worldly nature, such as the Church developed for it later

on.

10. The more the harsh oppression of the times forced the Jew to isolate

himself and to spend his life in studying and practicing the law,—which

was tantamount to “placing himself under the kingdom of God,”(1091) the

more he lost sight of his sublime mission for the world at large. Only

individual thinkers, such as Jehuda ha Levi and Maimonides, kept a vision

of the world-mission of Israel, when they called Jesus and Mohammed, as

founders of Christianity and Islam, messengers of God to the idolatrous

nations, divinely appointed to bring them nearer to Israel’s truth,(1092)

or when they pointed forward to the time when all peoples will recognize

in the truth their common mother and in God the Father of all

mankind.(1093) A most instructive Midrash on Zechariah IX, 9 gives the

keynote of this belief. “At that time God as the King of Zion will speak

to the righteous of all times, and say to them, ‘Dear as the words of My

teaching are to Me, yet have ye erred in that ye have followed only My

Torah, and have not waited for My world-kingdom. I swear to you that I

shall remember for good him who has waited for My kingdom, as it is said,

Wait ye for Me until the day that I rise up as a witness.’ ”(1094)

On the other hand, it was owing to the sad consequences of the missionary

endeavors of the Church that the idea of the mission of Judaism was given

a different direction. Not conversion, but conviction by teaching and

example, is the historic task of Judaism, whose maxim is expressed in the

verse of Zechariah, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith

the Lord of hosts.”(1095) It is not the creed, but the deed, which tells.

Not the confession, but conduct, with the moral principles which govern

it, counts. Such a view is implied in the well-known teaching of Joshua

ben Hananiah, “The righteous of all nations will have a share in the world

of eternal bliss.”(1096) Judaism does not deny salvation to those

professing other religions, which would tend to undermine the foundation

of their spiritual life. Standing upon the high watchtower of time, it

rather strives ever to clarify and strengthen the universal longing for

truth and righteousness which lies at the heart of all religion, and is

thus to become a bond of union, an all-illuminating light for the world.

To quote the beautiful words of Leopold Stein in his _Schrift des

Lebens_:(1097) “Judaism, while recognizing the historic justification of

all systems of thought and faith, does not cherish the ambition to become

the Church Universal in the usual sense of the term, but aims rather to be

the focus, or mirror, of religious unity for all the rest. ‘The people

from of old,’ as the prophet called them, are to accompany mankind in its

progress through the ages and the continents, until it reaches the goal of

the kingdom of God on earth, the ‘new heaven and new earth’ of the

prophetic vision.”(1098) The thought of the Jewish mission is most

adequately expressed in the Neilah service of the Union Prayer Book, based

upon the Einhorn Prayerbook, which reads as follows:(1099) “Endow us, our

Guardian, with strength and patience for our holy mission. Grant that all

the children of Thy people may recognize the goal of our changeful career,

so that they may exemplify by their zeal and love for mankind the truth of

Israel’s watchword: One humanity on earth, even as there is but One God in

heaven. Enlighten all that call themselves by Thy name with the knowledge

that the sanctuary of wood and stone, which erst crowned Zion’s hill, was

but a gate through which Israel should step out into the world, to

reconcile all mankind unto Thee!”

Chapter L. The Priest-people and its Law of Holiness

1. The checkered, stormy, and yet triumphant march of the Jewish people

through the ages remains the great enigma of history for all those who do

not believe in a divine plan of salvation to be consummated through

Israel. The idea of Israel’s mission alone throws light on its law and its

destiny. Even before God had revealed to the people at Mt. Sinai the Ten

Commandments, the foundation of all religion and morality, and there

concluded with them a covenant for all time, He spoke: “Ye shall be unto

Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” thus consecrating them to be a

priest-people among the nations, and enjoining them to a life of especial

holiness. Possessing as a heritage from the Patriarchs the germ of a

higher religious consciousness, in distinction from all other peoples,

they were to make the cultivation, development, and promotion of the

highest religious truth their life-task, and thus to become the people of

God. At first they were to establish in the Holy Land a theocratic

government, a State in which God alone was the Ruler, while they lived in

priestly isolation from all the nations around. Thus they prepared

themselves for the time when, scattered over all the earth, they might

again work as the priest-people through the ages for the upbuilding of the

universal kingdom of God. This was Israel’s destiny from the very first,

as expressed by the great seer of the Exile when he beheld Israel

wandering forth among the nations, “Ye shall be named the priests of the

Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God.”(1100)

2. Among all religions the priest is considered especially holy as the

mediator between God and man, and in his appearance as well as in his mode

of life he must observe special forms of purity and holiness. He alone may

approach the Godhead, ascertain its will, and administer the sacrificial

cult in the sanctuary. He must represent the Divinity in its relation to

the people, embody it in his outward life, enjoy nothing which it abhors,

and touch nothing which could render him impure. These priestly rules

exist among all the nations of antiquity in striking similarity, and

indicate a common origin in the prehistoric period, during which the

entire cult developed through a priestly caste, beginning with simple,

primitive conceptions and transmitted in ever more elaborate form from

father to son. It goes without saying that the priests of the original

Hebrew race, which migrated from Babylonia, retained the ancient customs

and rules. They must also have adopted many other things from neighboring

peoples. During the entire period of the first temple, the priests—despite

all prophetic warnings—preferred the heathen cult with its vainglorious

pomp to the simple worship of the patriarchal times. As everywhere else,

the priesthood of Israel, and later of Judæa as well, thought only of its

own interests, of the retention of its ancient prerogatives, unmindful of

the higher calling to which it had been chosen, to serve the God of truth

and justice, to exemplify true holiness, to stand for moral rather than

ceremonial purity. Yet the sacerdotal institutions were indispensable so

long as the people required a sanctuary where the Deity should dwell, and

where the sacrificial cult should be administered. Every trespass by a

layman on the sanctuary reserved for the priests was considered sacrilege

and called for divine punishment. It was thus necessary to deepen the

popular notion of holiness and of the reverence due the sanctuary, before

these could be elevated into the realm of spirituality and morality. The

priesthood had to be won for the service of the loftier religious ideas,

so that it might gradually educate the people in general for its sublime

priestly mission. This conception underlies both the Mosaic law and its

rabbinical interpretation.

3. Through Biblical and post-Biblical literature and history there runs a

twofold tendency, one anti-sacerdotal,—emanating from the prophets and

later the Hasideans or Pharisees,—the other a mediating tendency,

favorable to the priesthood. The ritualistic piety of the priests was

bitterly assailed by the prophets as being subversive of all morality, and

later on the Sadducean hierarchy also constituted a threat to the moral

and spiritual welfare of the people. Before even the revelation at Sinai

was to take place, we read that warning was given to the priests “not to

break through” and stand above the people.(1101)

On the other hand, the law demands of the Aaronites a peculiar degree of

holiness, since “they offer the bread of their God upon the altar.”(1102)

Their blood must be kept pure by the avoidance of improper marriages.

Everything unclean or polluting must be kept far from them.(1103) The law,

following a tradition which probably arose in ancient Babylon, prescribed

minutely their mode of admission into the divine service, their vestments

and their conditions of life, the ritual of sacrifice and of purity; and

every violation of these laws, every trespass by a layman, was declared to

be punishable with death.(1104) The sanctuary contains no room for the

_nation_ of _priests_; no layman durst venture to cross its threshold.

Even in the legal system of the rabbis the ancient rights and privileges

of the priesthood, dating from the time when they possessed no property,

remained inviolate, and their precedence in everything was

undisputed.(1105)

The glaring contrast between the idea of a universal priesthood of the

people and the institution of the Aaronites is explained by a deeper

insight into history. The success of the reformation under Josiah on the

basis of the Deuteronomic code rested in the last analysis on the fact

that the priests of the house of Zadok at Jerusalem were placed in the

service of the higher prophetic teaching by being rendered the guardians,

executors, and later, in conjunction with the Levites, the teachers of the

Law, as it was presented in the book of the law of Moses, soon afterward

completed. The priesthood, deprived of everything that might remind one of

the former idolatry and heathenish practices, was, in its purer and holier

character, to lead the priest-people to true moral holiness through its

connection with the sanctuary and its ancient cult. Still the impulse for

the moral rebirth of the nation, for the establishment of a priest-people,

did not emanate from the Temple priesthood, nor even from the sacred soil

of Palestine; but from the Synagogue, which began in the Exile, under the

influence of the prophetic word and the Levitical song, in the form of

public worship by the congregation of the pious. Here arose a generation

of godly men, a class of singularly devout ones, living in priestly

holiness, who consecrated their lives to the practice of the law, and whom

the exile seer had designated as the true Israel, the servant of the Lord,

and these formed the nucleus of the renewed Israel.

4. That which the prophet Ezekiel had attempted in his proposed

constitution(1106) was accomplished in a far more thorough manner by the

Holiness Code, which emanated from his school and became the central

portion of the Mosaic books, and by the so-called Priestly Code, which

followed later. The object was to bring about the sanctification of the

entire people upon the holy soil of the national land, through

institutions embodying the ideal of the holiness of God in the life and

cult of the people. Circumcision, idealized by the prophetic author of

Deuteronomy,(1107) was to be made the sign of the covenant to mark as holy

the progeny of Abraham;(1108) strict laws of marriage were to put an end

to all heathenish unchastity; the Sabbath rest was to consecrate the

labors of the week, the Sabbatical month and year the produce of the

soil.(1109) The prohibition of unclean foods, heretofore reserved, as

among other nations, for the priests and other consecrated persons, was

now applied to the whole community in order that Israel should learn “to

set itself apart from all other nations as a holy people.”(1110) Even

their apparel was to proclaim the priestly holiness of the people by a

blue fringe at the border of the garments.(1111)

Whereas from the time of Ezra to Simon the Just priestly rulers endeavored

to promote the work of educating the people for holiness, the pious men

from among the people made still greater efforts to assert the claim of

holiness for the entire Jewish people as a priest-nation.(1112) The

repasts of these pious fellowships should be in no way inferior in

sanctity to those of the priests in the Temple. New ceremonies of

sanctification were to open and close the Sabbaths and festivals. Symbols

of priestly consecration should adorn forehead and arm in the form of the

phylacteries (_tefillin_), and should be placed at the entrance of every

house in the so-called _mezuzzah_. “God has given unto all an heritage

(the Torah), the kingdom, the priesthood, and the sanctuary”(1113)—this

became the _leitmotif_ for the Pharisaic school, who constantly enlarged

the domain of piety so that it should include the whole of life. Whoever

did not belong to this circle of the pious was regarded with scorn as one

of the lower class (_am ha-aretz_).

5. The chief effort of the pious, the founders of the Judaism of the

Synagogue, was to keep the Jewish people from the demoralizing influences

of pagan nature-worship, represented first by Semitic and later by Greek

culture. The leaders of the Pharisees “built a fence about the law”(1114)

extending the prohibition of mingling with the heathen nations so as also

to prohibit eating with them and participating in their feasts and social

gatherings,—not for the preservation of the Jewish race merely, as

Christian theologians maintain, but for the sake of keeping its inner life

intact and pure.(1115) “God surrounded us with brazen walls, hedged us in

with laws of purity in regard to food and drink and physical contact, yea,

even to that which we see and hear, in order that we should be pure in

body and soul, free from absurd beliefs, not polluted by contact with

others or through association with the wicked; for most of the peoples

defile themselves with their sexual practices, and whole lands pride

themselves upon it. But we hold ourselves aloof from all this”—so spoke

Eleazar the priest to King Ptolemy Philadelphus, according to the Letter

of Aristeas, thus giving expression to the sentiment most deeply rooted in

the souls of the pious of that period.(1116) They strove to build up a

nation of whom the Tannaim could say, “Whoever possesses no sense of shame

and chastity, of him it is certain that his ancestors did not stand at

Sinai.”(1117)

Naturally enough, the Greek and Roman people took offense at this

aloofness and separation from every contact with the outer world, and

explained it as due to a spirit of hostility to mankind. Even up to the

present it has been the lot of Jewry and Judaism to be misunderstood by

the world at large, to be the object of either its hate or its pity. The

world disregards the magnificence of the plan by which an entire people

were to be reared as a priest-nation, as citizens of a kingdom of God,

among whom, in the course of centuries, the seed of prophetic truth was to

germinate and sprout forth for the salvation of humanity. If, in complete

contrast to heathen immorality, the Jew in his life, his thinking, and his

will was governed by the strictest moral discipline; if, in spite of the

most cruel persecutions and the most insidious temptations, the Jewish

people remained steadfast to its pure belief in God and its traditional

standards of chastity, exhibiting a loyalty which amazed the nations and

the religious sects about, but was neither understood nor followed by

them, this was mainly due to the hallowing influences of the priestly

laws. They steeled the people for the fulfillment of their duty and

shielded them against all hostile powers both within and without. The very

_burden_ of the law, so bitterly denounced by Christianity since the time

of Paul, lent Judaism its dignity at all times, protecting it from the

assaults of the tempter; and that which seemed to the outsider a heavy

load was to the Jew a source of pride in the consciousness of his divine

election.(1118)

6. But most significant in the character and development of Judaism is the

fact that all the leading ideas and motives which emanated from the

priesthood of the Jewish people were concentrated in one single focus, the

_hallowing of the name of God_. Two terms expressed this idea in both a

negative and a positive form, the warning against “_Hillul ha

Shem_”—profanation of the name of God—and the duty of “_Kiddush ha

Shem_”—sanctification of God’s name. These exerted a marvelous power in

curbing the passions and self-indulgence of the Jew and in spurring him on

to the greatest possible self-sacrifice and to an unparalleled willingness

to undergo suffering and martyrdom for the cause. These terms are derived

from the Biblical verse, “Ye shall not profane My holy name, but I will be

hallowed among the children of Israel; I am the Lord who halloweth

you.”(1119) This verse forms the concluding sentence of the precepts for

the Aaronitic priesthood and warns them as the guardians of the sanctuary

to do nothing which might in the popular estimation degrade them or the

divine cause intrusted to them. When, however, during the Maccabean wars,

the little band of the pious proved themselves to be the true priesthood

in their Opposition to the faithless Aaronites, offering their very lives

as a sacrifice for the preservation of the true faith in God, the

Scriptural word received a new and higher meaning. It came to signify the

obligation of the entire priest-people to consecrate the name of God by

the sacrifice of their lives, and also their duty to guard against its

profanation by any offensive act. In connection with this Scriptural

passage the sages represent God as saying, “I have brought you out of

Egypt only on the condition that you are ready to sacrifice your lives, if

need be, to consecrate My name.”(1120) From that period it became a duty

and even a law of Judaism, as Maimonides shows in his Code, for each

person in life and in death to bear witness to His God.(1121) “Ye are My

witnesses, saith the Lord, and I am God”(1122)—and witnesses being in the

Greek version martyrs, the word afterward received the meaning of

“blood-witnesses.”—This passage of the prophet is commented on by Simeon

ben Johai, one of the great teachers who suffered under Hadrian’s

persecution, in the following words, “If ye become My witnesses, then am I

your Lord, God of the world; but if ye do not witness to Me, I cease to

be, as it were, the Lord, God of all the world.”(1123) That is to say, it

is the martyrdom of the pious which glorifies God’s name before all the

world. Or, as Felix Perles says so beautifully, “As every good and noble

man must ever bear in mind that the dignity of humanity is intrusted to

his hand, so should each earnest adherent of the Jewish faith remember

that the glory of God is intrusted to his care.”(1124) The Jewish people

has fulfilled this priestly task through a martyrdom of over two thousand

years and has scornfully resisted every demand to abandon its faith in

God, not consenting to do so even in appearance. Surely historians or

philosophers who can ridicule or commiserate such resistance betray a

hatred which blinds their sense of justice. As a matter of fact, it was

the consciousness of the Jewish people of its priestly mission that has

made it a pattern of loyalty for all time.

7. Moreover, the fear of profaning the divine name became the highest

incentive to, and safeguard of the morality of the Jew. Every misdeed

toward a non-Jew is considered by the teachers of Judaism a double sin,

yea, sometimes, an unpardonable one, because it gives a false impression

of the moral standard of Judaism and infringes upon the honor of God as

well as that of man. The disciples of Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach once bought

an ass for him from an Arab, and to their joy found a precious stone in

its collar. “Did the seller know of this gem?” asked the master. On being

answered in the negative, he called out angrily, “Do you consider me a

barbarian? Return the Arab his precious stone immediately!” And when the

heathen received it back, he cried out, “Praised be the God of Simeon ben

Shetach!”(1125) Thus the conscientious Jew honors his God by his conduct,

says the Talmud, referring to this and many similar examples. Such lessons

of the Jew’s responsibility for the recognition of the high moral purity

of his religion have ever constituted a high barrier against immoral acts.

The words, “Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” form

significantly the introduction to the chapter on the love of man, the

nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, placed at the very center of the entire

Priestly Code. “Your self-sanctification sanctifies Me, as it were,” says

God to Israel, according to the interpretation of this verse by the

sages.(1126) In contrast to heathendom, which deifies nature with its

appeal to the senses, Judaism teaches that holiness is a moral quality, as

it means the curbing of the senses. And in order to prevent Israel, the

bearer of this ideal of holiness, from sinking into the mire of heathen

wantonness and lust, the separation of the Jew from the heathen world,

whether in his domestic or social life, was a necessity and became the

rule and maxim of his life for that period. All the many prohibitions and

commands had for their object the purification of the people in order to

render the highest moral purity a hereditary virtue among them, according

to the rabbis.(1127)

8. It is true that the accumulation of “law upon law, prohibition upon

prohibition” by the rabbis had eventually the same injurious effect which

it had exerted upon the priests in the Temple. The formal law, “the

precepts learned by rote,” became the important factor, while their

purpose was lost to sight. The shell smothered the kernel, and blind

obedience to the letter of the law came to be regarded as true piety. It

cannot be denied that adherence to the mere form, which was transmitted

from the Temple practice to the legalism of the Pharisees and the later

rabbinic schools with their casuistry, impaired and tarnished the lofty

prophetic ideal of holiness. It almost seems as if the clarion notes of

such sublime passages as that of the Psalmist,

“Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord,

And who shall stand in His holy place?

He that hath clean hands and a pure heart;

Who hath not taken My name in vain, and hath not sworn

deceitfully,”(1128)

no longer found its full resonance in the heart of Judaism. In the

practice of external acts of piety religion became petrified and the

spirit took flight. That which is of secondary importance became of

primary consideration. This is the fundamental error into which the

practice and the development of the Law in Judaism lapsed, and to which no

careful observer can or dares close his eyes. Undoubtedly the Law, as it

embraced the whole of life in its power, sharpened the Jewish sense of

duty, and served the Jew as an iron wall of defense against temptations,

aberrations, and enticements of the centuries. As soon as the modern Jew,

however, undertook to free himself from the tutelage of a blind acceptance

of authority and inquired after the purpose of all the restrictions which

the Law laid upon him, his ancient loyalty to the same collapsed and the

pillars of Judaism seemed to be shaken. Then the leaders of Reform, imbued

with the prophetic spirit, felt it to be their imperative duty to search

out the fundamental ideas of the priestly law of holiness, and,

accordingly, they learned how to separate the kernel from the shell. In

opposition to the orthodox tendency to worship the letter, they insisted

on the fact that Israel’s separation from the world—which it is ultimately

to win for the divine truth—cannot itself be its end and aim, and that

blind obedience to the law does not constitute true piety. Only the

fundamental idea, that Israel as the “first-born” among the nations has

been elected as a priest-people, must remain our imperishable truth, a

truth to which the centuries of history bear witness by showing that it

has given its life-blood as a ransom for humanity, and is ever bringing

new sacrifices for its cause.

Only because it has kept itself distinct as a priest-people among the

nations could it carry out its great task in history; and only if it

remains conscious of its priestly calling and therefore maintains itself

as the people of God, can it fulfill its mission. Not until the end of

time, when all of God’s children will have entered the kingdom of God, may

Israel, the high-priest among the nations, renounce his priesthood.

Chapter LI. Israel, the People of the Law, and its World Mission

1. Judaism differs from all the ancient religions chiefly in its

intrusting its truth to the whole people instead of a special priesthood.

The law which “Moses commanded us is an inheritance of the Congregation of

Jacob,”(1129) is the Scriptural lesson impressed upon every Jew in early

childhood. As soon as the Torah passed from the care of the priests into

that of the whole nation, the people of the book became the priest-nation,

and set forth to conquer the world by its religious truth. This aim was

expressed by all the prophets beginning with Moses, who said: “Would that

all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His spirit

upon them.”(1130) The prophetic ideal was that “they shall all know Me

(God), from the least of them unto the greatest of them,”(1131) and that

“all thy (Zion’s) children shall be taught of the Lord.”(1132) After the

people came to realize that the Law was “their wisdom and understanding in

the sight of the peoples,”(1133) they soon felt the hope that one day “the

isles shall wait for His teaching,”(1134) and confidently expected the

time when “many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the

mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach

us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths, for out of Zion shall go

forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”(1135) Once

liberated from the dominance of the priesthood, religion became the

instrument of universal instruction, the factor of general spiritual and

moral advancement. In addition it endowed humanity with an educational

ideal, destined to regenerate its moral life far more deeply than Greek

culture could ever do. The object was to elevate all classes of the people

by the living word of God, by the reading and expounding of the Scripture

for the dissemination of its truth among the masses.

2. Those who define Judaism as a religion of law completely misunderstand

its nature and its historic forces. This is done by all those Christian

theologians who endeavor to prove the extraordinary assertion of the

apostle Paul that the Jewish people was providentially destined to produce

the Old Testament law and become enmeshed in it, like the silkworm in its

cocoon, finally to dry up and perish, leaving its prophetic truth for the

Church. This fateful misconception of Judaism is based upon a false

interpretation of the word _Torah_, which denotes moral and spiritual

instruction as often as law, and thus includes all kinds of religious

teaching and knowledge together with its primary meaning, the written and

the oral codes.(1136) In fact, in post-Biblical times it comprised the

entire religion, as subject of both instruction and scientific

investigation. True, law is fundamental in Jewish history; Israel accepted

the divine covenant on the basis of the Sinaitic code; the reforms of King

Josiah were founded on the Deuteronomic law;(1137) and the restoration of

the Judean commonwealth was based upon the completed Mosaic code brought

from Babylon by Ezra the Scribe.(1138) This book of law, with its further

development and interpretation, remained the normative factor for Judaism

for all time. Still, from the very beginning the Law of the covenant

contained a certain element which distinguished it from all the priestly

and political codes of antiquity. Beside the traditional juridical and

ritualistic statutes, which betray a Babylonian origin, it contains laws

and doctrines of kindness toward the poor and helpless, the enemy and the

slave, even toward the dumb beast, in striking contrast to the spirit of

cruelty and violence in the Babylonian law.(1139) In the name of the

all-seeing, all-ruling God it appeals to the sympathy of man. These

exhortations to tenderness increase in later codes of law under the

prophetic influence, until finally the rabbis extended them as far as

possible. They held that every negligence which leads to the loss of life

or property by the neighbor, every neglect of a domestic animal, even

every act of deceit by which one attempts to “steal” the good opinion of

one’s fellow-men, is a violation of the law.(1140) Hence Rabbi Simlai, the

Haggadist, said that from beginning to end the Law is but a system of

teachings of human love,(1141) while another sage tried to prove from the

books of Moses that God implanted mercy, modesty, and benevolence in the

souls of Israel as hereditary virtues.(1142) In the same spirit Rabbi Meir

described the law of Israel as the law of humanity, supporting his

statement by a number of biblical passages.(1143)

3. But, as light by its very nature illumines its surroundings, so the

Torah in the possession of the Jewish people was certain to become the

light of mankind. First of all, the book of Law itself insists that the

father shall teach the word of God to his children, using many signs and

ceremonies that they may meditate on the works of God and walk in the path

of virtue, and that the divine commands should be “in the mouth and in the

heart of all to do them.”(1144) It was made incumbent upon the high priest

or king to read the Law at least once every seven years to the whole

people assembled in the holy city for the autumnal festival,—men, women,

children, and the sojourners in the gates,—so that it should become their

common property.(1145) This precept probably gave rise to the triennial

and later the annual system of Torah reading on the Sabbath. But in

addition to the book of Law the prophetic words of consolation were read

to the people, a custom which originated in the Babylonian exile, and was

continued under the name of _Haftarah_ (“dismissal” of the

congregation).(1146) The seer of the exile refers to these prophetic words

of comfort which were offered to the people on the Sabbath as well as

other feasts and fasts: “Attend unto Me, O My people, and give ear unto

Me, O My nation, for instruction (Torah) shall go forth from Me, and My

right on a sudden for a light of the people.... Hearken unto Me, ye that

know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law; fear ye not the

taunt of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth

shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool;

but My favor shall be forever, and My salvation unto all

generations.”(1147) Moved by such stirring ideals, Synagogues arose in

Jewish settlements all over the globe, and the book of the Law, in its

vernacular versions, Greek and Aramaic, together with the words of the

prophets, became the general source of instruction. In the words of the

Psalms, it became “the testimony of the Lord, making wise the simple,”

“rejoicing the heart,” “enlightening the eyes,” “more to be desired than

gold.”(1148) Nay more, the study of the Law became the duty of every man,

and he who failed to live up to the precepts of the devotees of the Law,

the Pharisean fellowships, was scorned as belonging to the lower class,

_am haaretz_. Every morning the pious Jew, first thanking God for the

light of day, followed this up by thanking Him for the Torah, which

illumines the path of life. “The welfare of society rests upon the study

of the Law, divine service and organized charity,” was a saying of Simon

the Just, a high priest of the beginning of the third pre-Christian

century.(1149) Thus learning and teaching became leading occupations for

the Jew, and the two main departments of Jewish literature,

correspondingly, are _Torah_ and _Talmud_, that is, the written Law and

its exposition. Indeed, the highest title which the rabbis could find for

Moses was simply “Moses our Teacher.” Nay, God Himself was frequently

represented as a venerable Master, teaching the Law in awful

majesty.(1150)

4. Later under the successive influence of Babylonian and Greek culture,

the wisdom literature was added to the Prophets and the Psalms, giving to

the whole Torah a universal scope, like that claimed for Greek philosophy.

The Jewish love of learning led to an ever greater longing for truth by

adding the wisdom of other cultured nations to its own store of knowledge.

This motive for universalism became all the stronger, as the faith became

more centered in the sublime conception of God as Master of all the world.

As the God of Israel appeared the primal source of all truth, so the

revealed word of God was considered the very embodiment of divine

wisdom.(1151) In fact, the men of hoary antiquity described in the opening

chapters of Genesis were actually credited with being the instructors of

the Greeks and other nations.(1152) We read a strange story by a pupil of

Aristotle that the great sage admired a Jew, whom he happened to meet, as

both wise and pious, so that the little Jewish nation was often

considered, like the wise men of India, to be a sect of

philosophers.(1153) Indeed, Judaism became a matter of curiosity to the

pagan world on account of the Synagogue, which attracted them as a unique

center of religious devotion and instruction, and especially because of

the Bible, which was read and expounded in its Greek garb from Sabbath to

Sabbath. The Jewish people raised themselves to be a nation of thinkers,

and largely through association with Greek thought. For example, in the

Greek translation of the Scriptures all anthropomorphic expressions are

avoided. As the personal name of Israel’s God of the covenant, *JHVH*, was

replaced by the name _Adonai_, “the Lord,”(1154) the universality of the

Jewish God became still more evident. Thus the pagan world could find God

in the Scriptures to be the living God who dwells in the heart and is

sought by all mankind. The Jew became the herald of the One God of the

universe, his Bible a book of universal instruction. Many of the heathen,

without merging themselves into the community of the covenant people and

without accepting all its particularistic customs, rallied around its

central standard as simple theists, “worshipers of God,” or “they who fear

the Lord,” according to the terminology of the Psalms.(1155)

5. An old rabbinical legend, which is reflected in the New Testament

miracle of Pentecost, relates that the Ten Words of Sinai were uttered in

seventy tongues of fire to reach the known seventy nations of the

earth.(1156) We are told that when the people entered Canaan, the words of

the Law were engraved in seventy languages on the stones of the altar at

Mount Ebal.(1157) That is, the law of Sinai was intended to provide the

foundation for all human society. One Haggadist even asserts that the

heathen nations all refused to accept the Law, and if Israel also had

rejected it, the world would have returned to chaos.(1158) Israel was, so

to speak, _forced_ by divine Providence to accept the Law on behalf of the

entire race. Hillel, under the Romanized reign of Herod, was fully

conscious of this world-mission when he said: “Love your fellow creatures

and lead them to the study of the Law.”(1159)

6. The outlook for the Jewish people, however, became darker and darker

through its struggle with Rome. The fanatical Zealots entirely opposed the

spreading of the knowledge of the Torah among those who did not belong to

the household of Israel.(1160) Then the Church sent forth her missionaries

to convert the pagan world by constant concessions to its polytheistic

views and practices. The seed sown by Hellenistic Judaism yielded a rich

harvest for the Church, even though it was won at the sacrifice of pure

Jewish monotheism. The Ten Words of Sinai, the Mosaic laws of marriage,

the poor laws, and other Biblical statutes became the cornerstone of

civilization, but in a different guise; the heritage of Judaism was

transplanted to the Christian and Mohammedan world in a new garb and under

a new name. Henceforth the Jew, dispersed, isolated, and afflicted, had to

struggle to preserve his faith in its pristine purity. The very danger

besetting the study of the Law during the Hadrianic persecutions, which

followed the Bar Kochba revolt, increased his zeal and courage. “Devoid of

the Torah, our vital element, we are surely threatened with death,” said

Rabbi Akiba, applying to himself the fable of the fox and the fishes, as

he defied the Roman edict.(1161) The fear lest the Torah should be

forgotten, stimulated the teachers and their disciples ever anew to its

pursuit. The Torah was regarded as the bond and pledge of God’s nearness;

hence the many rabbinical sayings concerning its value in the eyes of God,

which are frequently couched in poetic and extravagant language.(1162) The

underlying idea of them all is that Israel could dispense with its State

and its Temple, but not with its storehouse of divine truth, from which it

constantly derives new life and new youth.

7. One important question, however, remains, which must be answered: Has

the Jewish people, shut up for centuries by the ramparts of Talmudic

Judaism, actually renounced its world mission? In transmitting part of its

inheritance to its two daughter-religions, has Judaism lost its claim to

be a world-religion? The Congregation of Israel, according to the Midrash,

answers this question in the words of the Shulamite in the Song of Songs:

“I sleep, but my heart waketh.”(1163) During the sad period of the Middle

Ages, Judaism in its relation to the outer world slept a long

winter-sleep, now in one land and now in another, but its inner life

always manifested a splendid activity of mind and soul, exerting a mighty

influence upon the history of the world. It was declared dead by the

ruling Church, and yet it constantly filled her with alarm by the truths

it uttered. The Jewish people was given over to destruction and

persecution a thousand times, but all the floods of hatred and violence

could not quench its flame. Its marvelous endurance constituted the

strongest possible protest against the creed of the Church, which claimed

to possess an exclusive truth and the only means of salvation. To suffer

and die as martyrs by thousands and tens of thousands, at the stake and

under the torture of bloodthirsty mobs, testifying to the One Only God of

Israel and humanity, was, to say the least, as heroic a mission as to

convert the heathen. Indeed, the Jew, in reciting the Shema each morning

in the house of God, renewed daily his zeal and faith, by which he was

encouraged to sacrifice himself for his sacred heritage.

8. But the cultivation of the Torah, obligatory upon every Jew, effected

more even than the preservation of monotheism. Alongside of the Church,

which did its best to suppress free thought, Islam provided a culture

which encouraged study and investigation, and this brought the leading

spirits in Judaism to a profounder grasp of their own literary treasures.

Bold truth-seekers arose under the Mohammedan sway who had the courage to

break the chains of belief in the letter of the Scripture, and to claim

the right of the human reason to give an opinion on the highest questions

of religion. The leading authorities of the Synagogue followed a different

course from that of the Church, which had brought the Deity into the

sphere of the senses, divided the one God into three persons, and induced

the people to worship the image of Mary and her God-child rather than God

the Father. They insisted on the absolute unity and spirituality of God,

eliminated all the human attributes ascribed to Him in Scripture, and

strove to attain the loftiest and purest possible conception of His being.

It took a mighty effort for the people of the Law to reëxamine the entire

mass of tradition in order to harmonize philosophy and religion, and

invest the divine revelation with the highest spiritual character. This

mental activity exerted a great influence upon the whole course of thought

of subsequent centuries and even upon modern philosophy. Again Israel

became conscious of his mission of light. Jewish thinkers, often combining

rabbi, physician, and astronomer in one person, carried the torch of

science and free investigation, directly or indirectly, into the cell of

many a Christian monk, rousing the dull spirit of the Middle Ages and

bringing new intellectual nurture to the Church, else she might have

starved in her mental poverty.

The Jews of Spain became the teachers of Christian Europe. The forerunners

of the Protestant Reformation sat at the feet of Jewish masters. Jewish

students of the Hebrew language, scientifically trained, opened up the

simple meaning of the Scriptural word, so long hidden by traditional

interpretation. The Lutheran and the English translations of the Bible

were due to their efforts, and thus also the rise of Protestantism, which

inaugurated the modern era. Yet this intellectual revival, this wonderful

activity of various thinkers among medieval Jewry, required a soil

susceptible to such seeds, an atmosphere favorable to this intense search

for truth. This existed only in the Jewish people, since the universal

study of the Torah brought it about that “all the children of Israel had

light in their dwellings” even while dense darkness covered the nations of

the medieval world.

9. We must not underrate the cultural mission of the Jewish people, with

its striking contrast to the New Testament point of view, which created

monasteries and the celibate ideal, and thus discouraged industry,

commerce, and scientific inquiry. Dispersed as they were, the Jewish

people cultivated both commerce and science, and thus for centuries were

the real bearers of culture, the intermediaries between East and West.

While the Church divided mankind into heirs of heaven and hell, thus

sowing discord and hatred, the little group of Jews maintained their ideal

of an undivided humanity. But even their industrial and commercial

activity had more than a mere economic significance. Forced upon the Jew

by external pressure, it was favored by Jewish teaching as a means of

promoting spiritual life. Not poverty and beggary, but wealth begotten by

honest toil has the sanction of Judaism in accordance with the saying

“Where there is no flour for bread, there can be no support for the study

of the Torah.”(1164) Moreover, the rabbis interpreted the verse, “Rejoice,

O Zebulun, in thy going out, and thou, Issachar, in thy tents,”(1165) as

meaning that Zebulun, the seafarer, shared the profit of his commerce with

Issachar, who taught the law in the tents of the Torah, that he, in turn,

might share his brother’s spiritual reward. Indeed, the Jew used his gains

won by trade in the service of the promotion of learning, and thus his

entire industry assumed a higher character. Our modern civilization, with

its higher values of life, owes much to the cultural activity of the

medieval Jew, which many leaders of the ruling Church still ignore

completely. It is true that the hard struggle for their very existence

kept the people unconscious of their cultural mission, and only now that

they have attained the higher historical point of view can they exclaim

with Joseph their ancestor: “As for you, ye meant evil against me; but God

meant it for good, to bring it to pass, as it is this day, to save much

people alive.”(1166) The fact is that Jewish commerce has been an

important cosmopolitan factor in the past, and is still working, to a

certain extent, in the same direction.(1167)

10. New and great tasks have been assigned by divine Providence to the Jew

of modern times, who is a full citizen in the cultural, social, and

political life of the various nations. These tasks are most holy to him as

Jew, the bearer of a great mission to the world, which is embodied in his

heritage, the Torah. However splendid may have been his achievements in

the fields of industry and commerce, of literature and art, his own

peculiar possession is the Torah alone, the religious truth for which he

fought and suffered all these centuries past; this must forever remain the

central thought, the aim of all his striving.(1168) Every achievement of

the Jewish people, every attainment in power, knowledge, or skill, must

lead toward the completion of the divine kingdom of truth and justice;

that for which the Jew laid the foundation at the beginning of his history

is still leading forward the entire social life of man to render it a

divine household of love and peace. In order that it may carry out the

world mission mapped out by its great seers of yore, the Jewish people

must guard against absorption by the multitude of nations as much as

against isolation from them. It must preserve its identity without going

back into a separation rooted in self-adulation and clannishness. Instead,

the great goal of Israel will be reached only by patient endurance and

perseverance, confidently awaiting the fulfillment in God’s own time of

the glorious prophecy that all the nations shall be led up to the mountain

of the Lord by the priest-people, there to worship God in truth and

righteousness. The Law is to go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord

from Jerusalem, as a spiritual, not a geographical center. This vision

forms the highest pinnacle of human aspiration, rising higher and higher

before the mind, as man ascends from one stage of culture to another,

striving ever for perfection, for the sublimest ideal of life. This is

characteristically expressed by the Midrash, which refers to the Messianic

vision: “And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain

of the Lord’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and

shall be exalted above the hills.”(1169) “One great mountain of the earth

will be piled upon the other, and Mount Zion will be placed upon the top

as the culminating point of all human ascents.” Taken in a figurative

sense, in which alone the saying is acceptable, this means that all the

heights of the various ideals will finally merge into the loftiest of all

ideals, when Israel’s one holy God will be acknowledged as the One for

whom all hearts yearn, whom all minds seek as the Ideal of all ideals.

Chapter LII. Israel, the Servant of the Lord, Martyr and Messiah Of the

Nations

1. “If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence. If the

duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne, ennoble,

the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land. If a literature is

called rich which contains a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a

national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and

the actors are also the heroes?” With these classic words Leopold Zunz

introduces the history of sufferings which have occasioned the hundreds of

plaintive and penitential songs of the Synagogue described in his book,

_Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters_. They are the cries of a nation

of martyrs, resounding through the whole Jewish liturgy, and appearing

already in many of the Psalms: “Thou hast given us like sheep to be eaten;

and hast scattered us among the nations. Thou makest us a taunt to our

neighbors, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. All

this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten Thee, neither have we been

false to Thy covenant: Nay, for Thy sake are we killed all the day; we are

accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord?

Arouse Thyself, cast not off forever. Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face, and

forgettest our affliction and our oppression?”(1170) Thus the congregation

of Israel laments; and what is the answer of Heaven?

2. The Bible contains two answers: the first by Ezekiel, priest and

prophet; the other by the great unknown seer of the Exile whose words of

comfort are given in the latter part of Isaiah. Ezekiel gave a stern and

direct answer: “The nations shall know that the house of Israel went into

captivity because of their iniquity, because they broke faith with Me, and

I hid My face from them; so I gave them into the hand of their

adversaries, and they fell all of them by the sword. According to their

uncleanness and according to their transgressions did I unto them; and I

hid My face from them. Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Now will I bring

back the captivity of Jacob, and have compassion upon the whole house of

Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. And they shall bear their

shame, and all their breach of faith which they committed against

Me.”(1171) These words are echoed in the harrowing admonitory chapter of

Leviticus, which, however, closes with words of comfort: “And they shall

confess their iniquity ... if then perchance their uncircumcised heart be

humbled, and they then be paid the punishment of their iniquity; then will

I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and

also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the

land.”(1172) This view of divine justice as external and punitive was

basic to the Synagogue liturgy and the entire rabbinic system. The

priestly idea of atonement, that sin could be wiped out by sacrifice, made

a profound impression, not only upon individual sinners, but also upon the

nation. Hence it was applied especially to the people in exile when they

could not bring sacrifices to their God. Still, one means of atonement

remained, the exile itself, which could lead the people to repentance and

finally to God’s forgiveness.(1173) Thus the people retained a hope of

return from their captivity. They were assured by their prophetic monitors

that the faithful community of the Lord would again be received in favor

by the God of faithfulness. They even built their hope upon the portions

of the Law, which was read to assembled worshipers that they might know

and observe it on their return to the land of their fathers. Israel could

say with the Psalmist: “Unless Thy law had been my delight, I should then

have perished in mine affliction.”(1174) According to a Palestinian

Haggadist, “Israel would never have persevered so long, had not the Torah,

the marriage contract of Israel with its God, pledged to it a glorious

future on the holy soil.”(1175) Wait patiently for God’s mercy, which in

His own time will rebuild Israel’s State and Temple!—this is the keynote

of all the prayers and songs of the Synagogue.